Sour Puss Page 20

  “Harry.” Susan put her hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I can read a map.”

  “Sorry. Well, anyway, this is what Patricia and Bill own. Down here is what Hy and Fiona own—I should just say Fiona. White Vineyards, about three hundred acres. Over here is Toby’s, and Toby is just under two hundred acres, and here is Rollie. Arch and Rollie’s Spring Hill, the main part, is also two hundred acres—well, two twenty. These days that’s a lot for Crozet. Okay, shaded in apple green are small growers who sell to the large ones.”

  “What’s the pink?”

  “Those are small farms Rollie and Arch have bought up. When you add Rockland—Toby’s—to it, Spring Hill controls just under five hundred acres.”

  Just then Arch pulled into the post office. He emerged from his truck. “Are you coming back to work here?”

  “No.” Harry smiled.

  “It’s not the same without you and Miranda. Yeah, the big building and the extra post boxes are good, but we’ve lost something.” He walked over. “Now, what are you up to?”

  “Vineyards. Who owns what, who controls what, and you’re coming out on top.”

  He smiled broadly. “Good for Spring Hill. Harry, any more sharpshooters?”

  “No. Not yet anyway.”

  “You just never know. I sure hope they aren’t adjusting to the latitude and the warmer winters. If they do, we’re in big trouble. Well, let me go pick up the mail. Nice to see you.” He turned, then stopped. “Are you two going to put more acres in grapes?”

  “Not yet,” Harry answered.

  “Buy land while you can. There will be a point in Albemarle County where it will be only the very rich and the very poor.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to ever qualify as the very rich.” Harry laughed.

  “Me, either,” Susan agreed.

  “Not true. If either of you ladies ever sell the land you’ve inherited, you’ll be worth millions. Let me know. Rollie has a big bankroll.”

  “Arch, if I sell my land, I sell my birthright,” Harry said.

  “Me, too. The Bland Wade tract has been in our family since right after the Revolutionary War.”

  “That’s well and good, but if property taxes keep going up, and you know they will, and if, for some reason, your nursery business doesn’t bring in enough cash, you’ll be land poor, sure as shooting.”

  “Somehow, Arch, we’ll hang on. The land is who we are.” Harry spoke for herself and Susan.

  “Well, keep it in mind. You never know. And you’re both very smart ladies.” He smiled and left.

  “I guess on paper we’re already millionaires based on the value of the land.” Susan thought it out.

  “We are?” Harry hadn’t given it a thought.

  “Pretty sure. It was our good fortune to be born into families that never sold off their land no matter how bad the times were. How they kept it together through the booms and busts of the nineteenth century, the war, the horrible aftermath, and then the crash in the 1930s—it’s a testimony to how much they loved this place and how much they believed in the future.”

  “It really is,” Harry solemnly replied. “We’ll do our part, no matter what.”

  Arch walked back out of the post office, cell phone to his ear, and waved to the ladies. As he drove by, he slowed and said, “Rollie will pay twenty percent over current market value. He’s on a roll.”

  “A lot of land has opened up in the last month,” Harry blurted out. “Seems like you two have come out ahead.”

  Arch stopped the truck for a minute. “Can’t let established vines go to ruin. The wine industry has come too far in Virginia, know what I mean?”

  “Fiona is going forward,” Susan said.

  Arch frowned for a second, then said “More power to her, but she’s another one who could cash in and walk away a rich woman.”

  “She’s already rich, plus she gets back the million dollars of Hy’s bail. Just think of all that money at one time. It’s overwhelming.” Harry’s eyes lit up.

  “See you, ladies.” Arch waved and drove on.

  “What’re you doin’ now?” Harry asked Susan.

  “Thought I’d go home and see if I can’t find southern hawthorne saplings, little guys for us to plant come fall. I ordered the sugar maples, did I tell you?” Susan found that she enjoyed researching tree varieties, then finding them.

  “No.”

  “They’ll come in late September. Boy, I’m not used to thinking ahead like this. I’m used to school calendars.” She sighed. “Where does the time go? Danny is a junior at Cornell and Brooks goes to Duke next fall.”

  “Sure goes fast,” Harry agreed. “All right, I’m going back to the farm. Have to see if I can work the boom on the tractor. Never used one before. I might wait and cut hay instead. I’ll ask Fair to help with the boom.”

  “Good luck with the boom.” Susan kissed Harry on the cheek, then hopped into her Audi and drove off.

  Two hours later Harry happily perched on the cushioned tractor seat as she cut the back acres; this was her orchard grass with regular alfalfa. The mix was popular with horsemen. She’d cut the quadrant with drought-resistant alfalfa later. She had to time it just right and allow the rows to dry out completely. Small wonder farmers obsessively watched the weather. But if she didn’t give the blister bugs time to get out of the drying hay, nothing good would come of it.

  She made the animals stay back in the barn when she cut hay.

  The cats dozed on the tack trunk in the center aisle, the day was so pleasant. Tucker was sprawled in the middle of the barn aisle.

  Riding on a tractor always got Harry to thinking. As the diesel engine rumbled, the newly mown hay exerted a hypnotic quality. The symmetry pleased her. The aroma intoxicated her. She hummed to herself, jouncing along. When she cut the last row, she disengaged the blades and slowly bumped back to the shed. As she washed down the equipment, the tiny beads of water caught the sun, thousands of moving rainbows then shattered on the John Deere green paint. Satisfied that she’d done a good job, she strode into her small vineyard, walking down the short rows filling the quarter acre. Not a glassy-winged sharpshooter in sight.

  She whistled on her way to the tack room, sat down at the heavy old schoolteacher’s desk, and dialed Rollie Barnes. Luckily he was in his office.

  “Rollie, this is Harry Haristeen. I was wondering if you’d give me a minute of your time.”

  “What can I do for you?” Rollie liked women asking him for advice.

  “Well, as you know, I have this piddling quarter of an acre in Petit Manseng. I haven’t followed this case going before the Supreme Court about shipping wine out of state. What really is this about?”

  “First, let me say that for the most part I favor states’ rights, but when they interfere with the free movement of goods and services, I believe there has to be a uniform federal law.” He sounded like a politician.

  “I’m with you.” She was, too.

  “Many states ban direct shipment of wine to consumers. Obviously, this puts a huge dent in profits.”

  “So if a person from Missouri calls Kluge Vineyard for a case of wine, Kluge Vineyard can’t send it to a private customer?” Harry asked.

  “Right. It’s outrageous.” His voice rose. “Of course, we have no way of knowing how the court will rule, but the case is about to come up. If it rules that banning direct shipment is unconstitutional, that will be a huge victory for everyone in this country who makes wine. It’s a victory for the consumer, too. Instead of going through a middleman with their markup, we can ship directly to the customer.”

  “Any idea how the court will rule?”

  “No.” His voice deepened, the register became less emotional. “The Supreme Court is erratic. Then again, I’m not a lawyer, thank God. I have to be rational or I lose business.”

  Harry laughed. “Thank you, Rollie. I knew you’d know. I guess a ruling in favor of direct shipment means business will boom and land prices will shoot up high
er.”

  Pleasure purred in his voice. “Oh, yes.”

  “You’re sitting in the catbird seat.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  She laughed. “Sure is. Ever look up in a tree and see where the catbird sits? Best place, and no one can get him.”

  “Well, then, you’re right.”

  After a few more pleasantries, Harry hung up, then called Cooper. “Hey.”

  “Hey back at you,” Cooper, in the squad car, answered.

  “Need any more help over at the house? I can come over tonight and tomorrow, too. Fair’s going to be making late calls tonight.”

  “He needs to take in a partner or even two.”

  “Yes, he and I will have that discussion when we go on our vacation end of July.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “No, we’re really going. BoomBoom will take care of the horses and Paul de Silva said he’d help, too. Of course, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker will go along with us.”

  At the sound of their names the two cats opened their eyes.

  “Vacation?” Pewter murmured. “Where?”

  The tiger rolled on her side. “Kentucky. They’re going to a horse show and to look at horses.”

  “That will be nice.” Pewter noticed another little bit of peppermint candy by the tack trunk. “Think they have good tuna in Kentucky?”

  “Pewter, there’s good cat food all over the country.” Mrs. Murphy lifted her head to listen to Harry.

  “Coop, I’ve been thinking about the two murders and Hy’s suicide. I know Rick thinks I get in the way—”

  Coop interrupted. “Let’s just say that since you don’t have to follow police procedures, you can find things that are critical to us, but you can also put yourself in harm’s way. Furthermore, Harry, you can compromise evidence.”

  “I know, I know. Well, I haven’t been in the way about the grape murders—that’s how I think of them.”

  “Because you’re still recovering from getting remarried. Obviously, you’re returning to reality.” Coop laughed. “Not that being married to Fair isn’t wonderful.”

  Harry laughed at herself. “God, am I that obvious?”

  “Yes.” Coop pulled off the road behind White Vineyards. “What’s up?”

  “Toby’s storage room in his barn contains an unusually large amount of flypaper.”

  “It did seem like a lot, but he must have been someone who buys in bulk. He had enough paper tablets, toilet paper, pencils, and aspirin for the next year.” Coop and Rick had combed Toby’s property.

  “What about Hy Maudant’s place? Did you find boxes of flypaper there?”

  “No. In fact, I’m on the dirt road behind White Vineyards now. Harry, most people who keep horses or cattle in a barn resort to flypaper.” Cooper was amused.

  “You’re going to walk up in the back of the grape rows, right?”

  A pause followed. “I am. You’re really waking up, aren’t you?”

  “Looking for sharpshooters?”

  “Yes.” Cooper knew there was no point lying to Harry.

  “Anything else? Like black rot?”

  “I’m not too well versed on these things, but if the vines are diseased or the young leaves spotted, I’ll find out what’s wrong.”

  “But if there is something wrong, Arch and Rollie would know.”

  “And they’ll take measures. They’re over there a lot.”

  “When you went through Toby’s and Hy’s files, was there material about the sharpshooter?”

  “Not in Hy’s files. All he had was one sheet of laminated paper with photos. Toby’s computer was bursting with information on every possible enemy to his grapes.”

  “Hmm, was there an extra large amount about the bugs?”

  “The problem is, I don’t know what an extra large amount is, given the sheer volume of information he had on everything, and I mean everything.”

  “What about Professor Forland’s files?”

  “We’ve been working with the Blacksburg authorities. Professor Forland had the latest research, like Toby, on everything.”

  “What I was wondering is, was Professor Forland secretly working on a mutation? Not to harm our crops but if our government wanted to use biological warfare against someone else?”

  “No.” Coop’s voice was firm. “He didn’t work for our government. He was called in as an expert by the wine lobby to testify before House and Senate subcommittees.”

  “Ah.”

  “Harry?”

  “I think this is about revenge. I don’t know who was trying to destroy whom first, Hy or Toby. It escalated. Maybe Professor Forland found out Toby’s intentions, which would have hurt everyone, and Toby killed him. Hy caught Toby later or figured it out. Hy knew his stuff. He made the big mistake of confronting Toby.”

  “And then finally overwhelmed with what he’d done, Hy shoots himself? It’s all plausible, Harry, but it’s not proven.”

  “But you’ve thought of this, too?”

  “We have.”

  “Have you thought of why the sharpshooters were in my peach orchard?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “The intention was for you to find them and sound a warning—I think. Again, this is conjecture.”

  “Didn’t work. The scare tactic. No one sold their vineyards because of it, although it’s early in the game.”

  “Yeah, but, Harry, it was a red herring. At least that’s what I think. Once you do the research, you find out there’s no way that sharpshooters, those little stealth bombers, can live here. So a true vintner wouldn’t panic and sell out, but latecomers to making wine might.”

  “The sharpshooters were brought up from farther down South.” Harry paused. “There’s no other way they could have gotten here.”

  “Clever.”

  “Somehow this gets back to me. I don’t know why.” Harry’s frustration mounted.

  “What do you know that I don’t? Why would you be a target with three men dead, one apparently by his own hand?”

  “I don’t know. You said ‘apparently.’ ”

  “Forensics has a small question mark because of the nature of the powder burns. It was Hy’s gun. Registered in his name. Like I said, it’s a small question mark. We aren’t yet treating it as a suspicious death, but the coroner sent his photographs to Richmond for a second opinion.” Coop, with her window down, inhaled the fragrance of the earth.

  “I keep coming back to those darned sharpshooters.”

  “Okay, listen to me. There is a very good chance that in some tangential way, you are . . . involved is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. If the tactic was simply to scare another grower, it seems putting the bugs in their vineyards would make more sense. But again, you would make sure to find out what the sharpshooters were and you’d go to the right people. It’s a little more sophisticated than dumping bugs in White Vineyards, for example.”

  “Maybe my peach orchard was the experiment. They didn’t want to use their vineyard or peach grove if they have one. And maybe I stumbled on it a day early. I don’t know. I’m trying to think of everything.”

  “I found the stealth bomber.” Pewter sat upright.

  “You did.” Mrs. Murphy supported Pewter, which gave the gray cat great satisfaction.

  Harry and Coop batted ideas around. All it did was make them dizzy with implication. Ideas aren’t hard evidence.

  After their discussion, Harry walked out into the center aisle. Movement caught her eye and she looked up to see Matilda dangling from a rafter; blacksnakes enjoy a good climb.

  Matilda startled Harry for an instant. “I wish she wouldn’t do that.”

  38

  The heavy aroma of coffee from Shenandoah Joe’s curled into Fair’s nostrils. He sighed, inhaled deeply, then opened his eyes. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, but his boots were neatly lined up on the floor, a pillow was under his thick blond hair, and a blanket covered him.


  Pewter, resting on his chest, opened her eyes when he did. “Good morning. Breakfast!”

  “Pewter, you must weigh twenty pounds.”

  The gray cannonball on his chest shifted her weight. “I do not. I have big bones.”

  From the kitchen Mrs. Murphy called out, “Ha!”

  “Oh, shut up. You’re no beauty basket, either.”

  “Maybe not, but at least I’m in shape.”

  Tucker, patiently waiting by her ceramic food bowl, groaned. “Not a fight before breakfast.”

  “Come on, Pewts, I need to get up.”

  Grumbling, switching her tail furiously, Pewter vacated her spot.

  Fair sat up, rubbed his eyes, then headed for the bathroom.

  By the time he walked into the kitchen, Harry had made a cheese omelette, lots of capers in it, with fresh tomato slices on the side sprinkled with olive oil and fresh parsley ground like green confetti.

  “Good morning.” She smiled as she put the plate on the table along with an English muffin.

  “Thanks. When did you get in?”

  “Nine-thirty. You were out like a light.” She sat down to join him.

  Harry wore a cotton undershirt—the kind kids called wife beaters—and thin cotton boxer undershorts. Once the worst of the winter passed, she hated to wrap up in a robe.

  “I don’t remember. God, I must have been tired. I read your note on the blackboard, drank a tonic water, and sat down to read the newspaper.” He watched the cream swirl in his coffee. “How’s it going at Coop’s?”

  “She was smart. She unpacked the kitchen first. Since that’s the worst job, anything after that is easy. I’ve got to remember to bring some flowers, something to make it like home.” She rose, grabbed a little notebook on the counter under the phone, and scribbled “flowers” on the page. “Can you think of a good housewarming gift?”

  “Does she have a coffee grinder?”

  “No. Perfect.” Triumphantly, she wrote, “Coffee grinder.”

  “See how smart I am?”

  “I know. You married me.” She demolished her omelette. “Horse okay?”