Catch as Cat Can Read online

  “You've always done good work. I don't know where you get your ideas. I remember the Homecoming float with the stallion that bucked. I still don't know how you built that bucking horse. No one's ever topped that.”

  “Wasn't bad.” He grinned.

  “Where do you get all this stuff?” She pointed to a broken pediment, good stone, too; a huge pile of ancient license plates; an old gas pump, the kind with a whirling ball on the top; a massive enameled safe with a central lock like a pilot's wheel; and a beautiful old Brewster phaeton, badly in need of repair but an example of the coach builder's art.

  Mrs. Murphy and Pewter sat in the cracked, deep green leather of the phaeton seat. The body of the coach itself was dark green enamel with red and gold piping, quite lovely even if faded and cracked.

  “O'Bannon's.”

  “The salvage yard? I haven't been there since the old man died.”

  “Opened up four acres in the back. The boys are good businessmen. Sean really runs the business and Roger runs the garage, old cars. He still spends half his time at the stock-car races. You ought to go over there.” Don carefully put the woodpecker into a large freezer he had for game. “They've even got a caboose on the old railroad siding. Must have been fun in the old days when businesses all had railroad sidings.”

  “When did Sean expand?” Harry asked, knowing Sean O'Bannon was the older of the two brothers and seemed more commanding than Roger.

  “He started about a month after his dad died. Said he could never get his father to see how the business could grow. He borrowed some money from the bank. It's a big expansion.”

  “Thought I knew everything.” She scratched her head.

  “You gonna be another Big Mim?” Don laughed, naming Mim Sanburne, in her late sixties although not broadcasting her age. Mim was wealthy, beautiful, imperious, and prepared to rule Crozet and all of Virginia if permitted to do so—and even if not permitted. She had to know everything.

  “Thanks,” Harry dryly replied.

  “Mom likes to give orders as much as Mim, secretly,” Pewter giggled.

  Murphy disagreed with her companion. “I don't think so. I think she likes to go her own way but if she has to work in a group of humans she wants to get the job done. Mother doesn't want to hear a lot of personal stuff about people's lives—girl talk. Hates it.”

  “I think she could run Crozet every bit as much as Big Mim.”

  “She has the ability but not the desire.” Mrs. Murphy sat up and thought how civilized it would be to travel in a phaeton on a perfect spring day such as this.

  “Don't forget Little Mim.” Tucker, who had been inspecting every item on the floor of the shop, walked over.

  “True.” Pewter considered the social and political ambitions of Mim's sole daughter. “She's vice-mayor now, too.”

  Jim Sanburne, husband to Mim, father to Little Mim, was mayor and had been mayor since the middle of the 1960s. His daughter challenged him for the mayoralty in the last city election but they compromised and she became vice-mayor, appointed by her father, approved by the City Council. Had she gone through with the campaign it would have divided the community. This way harmony was preserved and she was mayor-in-training.

  “Go over to O'Bannon's,” Don suggested. “Artists go there. Not just motorheads. BoomBoom Craycroft is there once a week, sifting through scrap metal.”

  “What?”

  “She's welding artistic pieces. Says it grounds her.”

  “Give me a break.” Harry grimaced. “BoomBoom can't stick to anything and every new activity is her salvation and ought to be yours, too. Well, at least she's out of her group therapy phase.”

  “Ready for the Dogwood Festival next weekend? Our mid-April rites of spring?” He changed the subject.

  “No.” She pursed her lips. “Damn that Susan. She suckers me every time.”

  “What do you have to do this time?”

  “Parade coordinator.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Means I have to line everyone up at the starting place, Crozet High School, space them correctly, use the bullhorn, and get them marching. It's easy enough until you consider who's marching in the parade. The clash of egos—our version of Clash of the Titans.”

  Don laughed. “BoomBoom especially. Your favorite person.”

  Harry started laughing so hard she couldn't talk. “She's leading a delegation of disease-of-the-week. I forget which disease.”

  “Last year it was MS.”

  BoomBoom Craycroft, a beautiful woman and an ambitious one, each year selected a charity. She would then lead this group in the annual parade, a celebration of spring and Crozet. It wasn't just that she wished to perform good deeds and help the sick, she also wanted to be the center of attention. She was too old to be the head majorette for the high school, obviously, so this was her venue.

  “I suppose we wouldn't laugh so hard if we had whatever illness it was but I can't help it. I really can't. I think she should lead a contingent for breast reduction.” Harry giggled. BoomBoom carried a lot of freight upstairs.

  Don gasped. “Don't do that.”

  “Spoken just like a man. You twit.” She made a gun out of her thumb and forefinger and “shot” him. She walked over to the huge safe. “Got your millions in there?”

  “Nah, just half a million.” He laughed, then thought a moment. “Give me two weeks on the woodpecker. You've hit me at a good time.”

  “Great.” She gave him a high five and picked up her brood to head to O'Bannon's. “See you at the parade.”

  3

  With the exception of the interstates, the roads in Virginia were paved-over Indian trails. They twisted through the mountains, leveled out along the riverbeds and streams, proving a joy to those fortunate enough to own sports cars.

  Harry, on the other hand, was the proud owner of two trucks. One truck, a dually F350, was expensive to run due to its big engine but she needed the power to pull her horse trailer. Thanks to a long-term loan she could afford the payments. She had three years left.

  For everyday use she drove her old 1978 Ford half-ton, ran like a top, was cheap to operate and repair.

  Today she curled around the hills and valleys in the old Superman-blue Ford, the two cats and Tucker cheerfully riding in the cab, commenting on the unfolding countryside.

  Don Clatterbuck's business rested just past the intersection with Route 240 on Whitehall Road. The O'Bannon Salvage yard was located east of town on that same Route 240, tucked off the highway so as not to offend intensely aesthetic souls. To further promote good community relations, the O'Bannon brothers had put up a high, solid, paled fence around the four acres, a considerable expense. A large, pretty, hand-painted sign swayed on a wrought iron post at the driveway, right by the big double gate. A black background with white lettering read “O'Bannon Salvage,” and a red border completed the sign. What made everyone notice the salvage yard, though, wasn't the sign but the black wrecker's ball hanging from a crane positioned next to the sign. Each morning Sean or Roger opened the heavy chain-link fence gate and each evening they locked it, the wrecker's ball and crane standing like a skeletal sentinel.

  As the postmistress of Crozet and born and bred there, Harry knew every side street and every resident, too. There was no shortcut to O'Bannon's. She'd have to go through town. Don had aroused her curiosity. She wanted to see Sean's improvements.

  She no sooner turned east than she passed the supermarket and spied Miranda Hogendobber, her coworker and friend, in the parking lot. Her paper bags of groceries were perched on the hood of the Ford Falcon, an antique that Miranda used daily, seeing no reason to spend money on a new car if the old one operated efficiently.

  Miranda seemed upset. Harry turned into the parking lot, found a space, and hurried over to her friend, the animals behind her.

  “Oh, Harry, I'm so glad to see you. Look. Would you look!” Miranda pointed to her tires, hubcaps missing. “I've never had anything like this happen—and at the su
permarket.”

  “It's all right, Mrs. Hogendobber.” Mrs. Murphy rubbed against her leg, feeling certain this would calm the lady.

  “What's the big noise about a hubcap?” Pewter shrugged.

  “Car's from 1961. How can she replace them?” Tucker replied.

  “The car runs fine without hubcaps.” Pewter struggled to understand human reactions, since she often felt they missed the point.

  “You know how she is. Everything has to be just so. Not a weed in her garden. She doesn't want to cruise around with her lug nuts showing, you'll pardon the expression.” Murphy circled Miranda, rubbing on the opposite leg.

  “Did you call the sheriff?”

  “No. I just walked out this very minute.” Miranda, crestfallen, stepped back to view her naked wheels again.

  “Tell you what, you stay here and I'll run over to the pay phone.” Harry started to move away, then stopped. “Do you have anything that needs to go into the freezer? I can take it home for you.”

  “No.”

  Harry called the sheriff's office and before she hung up the phone to rejoin Miranda, Cynthia Cooper, a deputy with the sheriff's department, pulled into the lot.

  “That was fast.” Harry smiled at the young, attractive deputy.

  “Just around the corner at the firehouse going over the parade route for the thousandth time.”

  “Look.” Miranda pointed to her car as Cynthia, notebook in hand, walked over.

  “That's just heinous.” Cynthia put her arm around Miranda. “Do you have any idea how much they're worth?”

  “Not a clue.” Miranda's pink lips, shiny with lipstick, pursed together.

  “That's probably why someone stole them. Because they're hard to find. They must be worth something,” Harry thought out loud.

  “Why can't she put on new hubcaps?” Pewter, irritated, wanted to get on the road again.

  “Not the same.” Tucker sniffed the wheels hoping for human scent but the perpetrator had pried off the hubcaps with something other than his hands.

  “Piffle,” the gray cat yawned.

  “Are we keeping you up?” Harry noticed the large yawn accompanied by a tiny gurgle. “Why don't you go back and sleep in the truck?”

  “Ha, ha,” Mrs. Murphy laughed.

  “Aren't we the perfect puss?” Pewter growled at the tiger cat.

  “Don't start. I'd like to have one Saturday where you two don't fight.” Tucker sat between the two cats.

  “Tell you what, while I write this up, Harry, pick up the mobile in the squad car and call O'Bannon's. Ask Sean if he has any Falcon hubcaps.”

  “Funny, I was just on my way over there.” Harry trotted over to the squad car, slipped behind the wheel, and dialed on the mobile unit. She punched in the numbers feeling envious. She'd love a mobile phone herself but thought it too expensive. “Hi, Sean, Harry.”

  “How you doing, Harry?”

  “I'm just fine but Mrs. Hogendobber isn't. Someone this very minute stole the hubcaps off her Ford Falcon. Coop's here at the scene of the crime, if you will, and she told me to call you. You wouldn't have any Ford Falcon hubcaps, would you?”

  “Yeah,” Sean's voice lowered. “I just bought them from the dude who must have stolen them. Dammit.”

  “We'll be right over.” Harry clicked the end button on the phone. “Hey, Coop. He's got them.”

  “My hubcaps?” Miranda's hand fluttered to her throat.

  “He said he just bought them off someone. If they aren't yours it's an odd coincidence. I said we'd be right over.”

  “Mrs. Hogendobber, do you feel settled enough to drive your car over there? I'll follow in the squad car.”

  “Of course I feel settled enough.” Miranda couldn't believe the deputy thought she was that ruffled by the theft.

  “I'll tag along, too, if you don't mind.” Harry picked up Pewter, who was wandering in the direction of the supermarket. “I was going that way anyway.”

  “Fine.” Cynthia opened the door to the squad car.

  Mrs. Murphy sat in Harry's lap as she backed out of the parking space. “First the woodpecker, now the hubcaps. What next?”

  “Extinction by death ray.” Pewter giggled.

  4

  Like ants at a picnic.” Mrs. Murphy marveled at the humans, about twenty, walking through lots of elaborate broken columns, pediments, sarcophagi all neatly divided according to function.

  The short drive to the building was dotted with large terra-cotta, stone, and ceramic pots. Next to the stone lot was a marble lot with large sheets of roseate marble that must have come from an old hotel lobby, smaller pieces of veined green marble, a bar top perhaps, which rested next to jet-black marble, again all neatly stacked. The largest outdoor lot was filled with rubble from stone walls, building foundations, some blocks hewn square and others natural.

  The indoor rooms of the main building contained wooden cornices, fireplace mantels, pilasters, handblown glass, hand-hammered nails, a cornucopia of treasures.

  A railroad siding ran parallel to the main building. A flatcar filled with heavy stone cornices, lintels, and copings was near the building. Flatbeds delivered materials and perhaps an old car once a week. Behind that was an old red caboose which stayed as yet unrestored.

  Sequestered in the rear of the four acres was Roger's garage shop. Fast-growing pines shielded it from view. Dotted around the various outdoor lots were small neat buildings. They looked like garden sheds and contained tools, old tractor parts, and other items needing protection from the elements.

  The animals found the debris less fascinating than the humans but occasionally a whiff of a former occupant, another dog or cat, lingered. Such olfactory information was recent, of course. No such signature wafted from shards saved from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

  Harry was amazed at the salvage yard's transformation into a kind of architectural dumping ground. The last time she had visited, Sean's father, Tiny Tim, who was tight as a tick with his money, jovially presided over the place, one big yard filled with rusting cars. Tim collected old gravestones as he was interested in the stonemasons' carvings. He'd talk about the tombstones, then move to the broader subject of death. Tiny Tim vehemently opposed autopsies. When he died his wife and sons did not request one so no one knew exactly what he died from, but a lifetime of smoking, drinking, and eating anything that didn't eat him first probably did him in.

  Sean, long and lean, wore a faded orange canvas shirt tucked into carpenter's pants. Grease was not ground into his hands, no smears of oil or dirt besmirched his shirt. He could have been a greengrocer except for the carpenter's pants.

  One wall displayed specialized tools used in restoration: elegant chisels, small hammers, larger ones, tiny butane torches for peeling back layers of leaded paint. The choices were overwhelming and expensive.

  Cynthia and Miranda approached the counter.

  Sean asked his assistant, Isabella Rojas, to take care of the customer he was serving and he strode across the expanse to greet the two women. “Welcome. I think you're in luck.”

  Harry caught up with them, the three animals lagging behind. “This is wonderful.”

  “Thanks.” He focused on Miranda. “Mrs. Hogendobber, follow me.”

  The humans and animals left the main building, walking about four hundred yards to the rear where thousands of hubcaps, sparkling in the sunlight, hung on wires. They were organized according to car model and year.

  The glare from the shiny surfaces caused Mrs. Hogendobber to shield her eyes with her hand. “My word, I had no idea there were this many hubcaps in the world.”

  “Let's cruise the outbuildings.” Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail. “Bet they're full of vermin.”

  “You're a ratter, are you?” Pewter sashayed, a superior air exuding from her gray fur. “You couldn't catch a comatose mouse.”

  “Look who's talking,” the corgi called over her shoulder as she sprinted toward the garage building followe
d by Mrs. Murphy. A trail of fading beer cans gave evidence of Roger O'Bannon's progress. Sobriety was not a virtue associated with Roger.

  Pewter declined. For one thing she really didn't care much about mousing or Roger O'Bannon. Birding was her game and she was still put out that Harry had saved the woodpecker for Don Clatterbuck's skills. She wanted to pull the feathers off. Truth be told, Pewter had never killed a bird but she picked up those who died or fell from the nest. She liked yanking out the feathers. She wouldn't eat one. Pewter wouldn't eat anything that wasn't well cooked except for sushi. Something about the darting and dodging of birds excited her and she dreamed of killing the blue jay housed in the maple tree. One day the arrogant fellow would fly too close, run his mouth too loud. She knew her day would come and she'd end his foul abuse. But for the moment she was content to sit at Harry's feet and listen to the tale of the hubcaps.

  “My hubcaps!” Miranda reached for the only set of Ford Falcon hubcaps on the line.

  “Now, Mrs. H, if you file a theft report I have to impound the hubcaps as evidence. If you don't file, you can put them right back on your car,” Cynthia counseled her.

  “No!” Miranda shook her head in disbelief.

  “That's the law.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “It depends on whether we find the suspect or not. If we do and he comes up for a hearing and then a trial, it could take months—many months.” Cooper sighed, for the clogging of the courts wore her out as well as her sister and brother officers. She often thought to herself that people would be far better off trying to solve problems themselves instead of running to the sheriff's department or a lawyer to do it for them. Somehow Americans had lost the ability to sit down and talk to one another, or so it seemed to her.

  “Oh, dear, what will the girls at church say?” Miranda worried about driving around undressed, as it were. “Well . . .”

  “Maybe we can solve this together.” Cynthia focused on Sean, now removing the hubcaps from the line. “The obvious question: who sold you the hubcaps?”