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  “Malaise.” Aunt Tally nodded. “I think we all feel that, Harry. It’s not just the shock of this death or the visceral impact of the others, it’s that we can’t see why.” She stopped, withdrawing her arm from Harry’s to put both hands on the silver hound’s head of her ebony cane. “Mark me, Harry, I am near one hundred and I tell you with the fullness of my years: there is nothing new under the sun. There are new technologies, but there is nothing new in the nature of the human animal.”

  “I believe that,” Harry interjected while Aunt Tally took a deep breath.

  “You do have a puzzling mind—I mean, you can often figure things out because you aren’t hampered by seeing things as you wish to see them. That’s a great gift. Your grandfather certainly had it, which is one of the reasons I fell in love with him. Your mother possessed it, too, and people with this gift can often run afoul of those who wish to view the world through rose-colored glasses. Use your sharp mind to ask, ‘Why do people kill?’ ”

  “Love, money, power.”

  “Exactly. To that I add revenge and to protect one’s self.”

  As they started walking toward the gracious house, Harry whispered as if to herself, “The vineyards. How do the vineyards tie in to love or revenge?”

  Aunt Tally, ears good even if her joints weren’t, replied, “Money. There’s a great deal of money once one is established.”

  “Enough to kill for?” Harry lifted her shoulders.

  “People kill one another in cities for an expensive pair of sneakers, for drugs, for the damnedest, most inconsequential things.”

  “True,” Harry softly answered.

  “One of the great virtues of becoming ancient is I have ample time to cogitate and to continue my study of human nature. They call economics the dismal science. I think not. It’s the study of human nature. Thousands of years of recorded history and we’ve learned nothing. Dismal.”

  That, too, applied to the small gathering at White Vineyards. One by one the people left, until only Fiona, Alicia, and BoomBoom remained to look over the rolling hills festooned with vines climbing on the wires. In other circumstances this would presage hope. Today it represented loss.

  Harry drove her old F-150 back to the farm; since Fair needed to visit his patients, he had attended the funeral driving his own truck. He called the horses his patients. He had a good bedside manner.

  Harry resolved to keep tabs on Fiona—she would have, anyway. She also wanted to find out who was calling with checkbook in hand, how long it would take people to show up at the door. Could someone be trying to create a monopoly of local vineyards? But to kill for it—well, that upset her. Just thinking about it made her mad, gave her energy. And she kept thinking, “Could anyone be that greedy? That stupid?”

  And she determined to visit local vineyards.

  That was a mistake.

  35

  Costs twenty-five dollars a plant. That’s a hell of a lot better than one thousand five hundred dollars a plant.” Dinny Ostermann pushed back his sweat-stained ball cap as he explained a new technique for identifying six common virus infections. “The worm is turning.”

  “How do you mean?” Harry had dropped by Dinny’s small vineyard in Crozet.

  Dinny bottled no wine. He picked his grapes and sent them on to whoever gave him the best price each year. As he grew an outstanding Cabernet Sauvignon, the Bordeaux variety of red grape, he enjoyed visits from various vintners’ representatives during harvest time.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker nosed around. Dinny loved animals, so he laughed as Mrs. Murphy leapt straight up to try and snatch a yellow swallowtail from midair. The gorgeous insect fluttered away, her compound eyes seeing the tiniest movement.

  “From Canada to Chile, people are waking up to the profit from wine. Wine consumption will finally overtake beer in our country.” He hooked his thumbs in his muddy jeans.

  “You really believe that wine will overtake beer?”

  “More health benefits, and who gets a wine gut?” He laughed.

  “Thought you might come to Hy’s funeral.”

  “No. Hy and I didn’t much get on.”

  “You think he killed Toby?”

  “Yeah. They hated each other.”

  “I’ve been swinging by as many vineyards as I can in Albemarle and Nelson Counties. Trying to find out if anyone has seen the sharpshooters. So far no one has. What about you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Heard you found them on strips in your peach orchard, but you haven’t seen any on your grape leaves, have you?”

  “No. But I’ve been thinking that it’s kind of cool, rain off and on, and pretty good breeze, too. Maybe they’ll show up when it’s calm and warmer.”

  “Let’s hope not.” Dinny’s black hair curled out from under his cap. “Damned queer, though.”

  “I’m furious that someone used my peach orchard for their experiment.”

  “I would be, too.” He removed his cap, holding it over his eyes as he looked toward the sun. “Should dry out by tomorrow.” He laughed. “Boots get heavy with all that mud caked in the treads.”

  “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’d call 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 an acre 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.
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  “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 she can 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 it in 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 Harry and Fair make it fun.” Tucker watched.

  “And the mothers like the humans, so that helps.” Mrs. Murphy noticed hundreds of tiny green praying mantises who had popped 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. “I can’t see that far.”

  “You can’t see much anyway.” Pewter felt ever so superior.

  “I 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.

  “I 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-apple treats 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.”

  “Spores?”

  “Yep. Fungal, and it’s so virulent that it can destroy plants in one month if untreated.”

  “Damn, that is a hateful one.” Harry pondered. “What can the farmers do?”

  “Spray, but that’s expensive. The chemicals to kill Asian rust cost eighteen dollars an acre. Not cheap.”

  “Did it get here on a plane—you know, spores on someone’s pants?” Harry was curious.

  “No. It’s the damnedest thing. Hurricane Ivan carried it here in a matter of weeks. It’s been moving slowly through Asia, then Africa, and then South America—slowly as in decades—and all it took was one big hurricane to carry the spores across the ocean.”

  “But Hurricane Ivan was two years ago.”

  “Hit Florida bad, and that’s where they first found the fungus, on kudzu.”

  “God, kudzu will take over the universe.” Harry gasped.

  “I don’t know about the universe, but the spores sure managed to get from the kudzu in Florida to the soybeans in Georgia with unseemly haste.” He handed out the rest of the apple treats. “I e-mailed Ned and he e-mailed back. I didn’t know that soybeans account for sixteen percent of our country’s agriculture production. Soybeans are twelve percent of U.S. export. Tell you what—first, that impressed me, and then second, Ned is up to speed.”

  As they walked back to the house Harry quietly said, “You’re as caught up in this murder stuff as I am.”

  “I’m the one telling you to butt out, keep your nose out of other people’s business.” He brushed his boots on the hedgehog scraper outside the screen door. “But I keep coming back to vineyards and revenge of some sort.”

  “And to the fact that growing grapes and making wine are becoming big business. There’s millions to be made.”

  “But first you have to spend millions. It’s a rich person’s game. People like Dinny Ostermann benefit, and I hope we do, too, but we won’t make the millions.”

  “What else have you been doing at your computer?” She felt Pewter brush against her leg as she walked into the kitchen.

  “Tuna!”

  “Pewter, let me make tea. I need a pick-me-up. You’ll get your tuna soon enough.”

  Fair smiled. “How do we know she isn’t sayin
g, ‘rib eye rare’?”

  “Yes!” Pewter stood on her hind legs.

  Mrs. Murphy along with Tucker padded into the kitchen. “A ballerina. Our very own toe dancer.”

  “If we get steak it will be because of me,” Pewter bragged.

  “Steak!” Tucker’s ears stood straight up and forward.

  As it happened, Fair decided to grill steak. Harry knew not to interfere with his cooking, but she had to laugh behind his back at how “the boys,” as she thought of them, ruthlessly competed about their grilling techniques. Ned, Jim, Blair, Tracy, even Paul de Silva had outdoor grills. She didn’t know what he was doing out there with his apron around his waist as he wielded a dangerously sharp long fork and knife.

  When Fair brought in the steaks, the aroma filled the kitchen.

  As they ate their supper, giving the animals small steak tidbits, they kept going over events.

  Harry rose to shut the kitchen window. “When the sun sets, the chill comes up fast. This is the coolest May I remember.”

  “It is.”

  “Hope you don’t have any emergencies tomorrow.”

  “Me, too. What did you have in mind?”

  She put on her sweetest smile. “Herb said Coop could move in when she was ready, so why don’t we take the horse trailer and load up her stuff? One haul will do it. She doesn’t have much.”

  This wasn’t the Sunday he’d hoped for, but he figured silently that with his muscle power and Harry’s organizing abilities they should be able to pull this off in three compressed hours. “Sure. She’ll make a good neighbor.”

  “I’ll make it worth your while.” Harry smiled.

  “Even if you don’t, it’s hard for a man to win when two women gang up on him, and one is his beautiful wife.”

  “You are such a flatterer.” But she loved it.

  37

  Maps spread over the hood of her truck, Harry pointed to acres she had shaded with different-colored pencils. Susan peered down as traffic pulled in and out at the post office parking lot, a big parking lot for Crozet.

  “Here’s Carter’s Mountain,” Harry said as the two cats and dog watched people, arms laden with mail, bills, and magazines, come and go.