Sour Puss Read online

  “But it does come back to Toby again.” Fair would never erase the sight of the murdered man from his mind. It wasn’t so horrible as it was unexpected, and sad, too, given Toby’s deranged state.

  “Yes, it does. Toby, toiling away at his computer, realized quickly that the sharpshooters had been deliberately placed in Harry’s peach orchard. His first response was that this was a plot to ruin his grapes. Always his grapes. Then he thought about other vineyards. The more he worked on it, the more he realized, no matter that the sharpshooter had been planted, it couldn’t do enough damage in a summer to be a problem to the grapes.” Cooper poured herself more lemonade.

  “Why would that get him killed?” BoomBoom was very curious.

  “He approached Arch. Not on the best of terms. However, they were on better terms than Toby and Hy. Toby accused Arch of bringing up the sharpshooters from North Carolina to scare people, hoping some would bail out. He thought Arch and Rollie were going to corner the market and then price-fix. Rollie, before he retired here, and I use ‘retire’ loosely, engaged in ruthless business practices. He made his fortune crawling over other people. Arch denied this to Toby. But that was the truth.”

  “Why didn’t Arch leave well enough alone?” Big Mim inquired.

  “He knew how highly intelligent Toby was. Toby, sooner or later, would figure out the sharpshooters were intended for the Alverta peaches. No, they couldn’t destroy the orchard, but they could do some small damage this season, then die in the frost. He knew how much keeping the old variety alive meant to Harry. He would have done more damage to other crops by other means as time went by.”

  “So he killed Toby with his own gun?” Fair said.

  “Yes, but he had the gun at Toby’s head and forced him to call you. Arch’s anger had escalated from harming peaches to harming you. He said each time he saw you, he hated you more. You don’t deserve Harry.”

  Fair put his arm around his wife’s waist. “He might be right there.”

  “Honey, don’t be a flatterer.” Harry blushed.

  “Sweetheart, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I let you down once in the past and I let you down again. I never saw it coming with Arch.”

  “Fair, none of us did.” BoomBoom cared for Fair, always would.

  “She’s right. Arch could have won an Oscar for his performance.” Alicia’s bracelet slid down her arm as she lifted her hand for emphasis.

  “You would know.” Big Mim smiled.

  “Everyone was on the wrong track. Fixed on the vineyards and those who own them.” Susan found each detail more riveting and dismal simultaneously.

  “Then why did he kill Hy? He confessed to that, didn’t he?” BoomBoom felt some relief in that Fiona no longer had to bear the stigma of her husband’s supposed suicide.

  Such things shouldn’t stick to family and friends, but people were harsh about suicide, it seemed.

  “Hy, no slouch either when it came to protecting against parasites and fungi, had been studying the sharpshooter as soon as the news hit. His worry, according to Arch, was that global warming was allowing these things to move ever northward.”

  “Boll weevil.” Miranda knew her bugs.

  “How about the parasite that kills honeybees that finally made it this far north in 1980 and is wreaking havoc? There sure might be something to this warming stuff.” Harry worried, as did every farmer.

  “Hy drove out to your peach orchard to see for himself.” Cooper continued with Arch’s confession. “He determined as did Toby that the sharpshooter had been planted there. Hy thought they hadn’t flown up here, because they would have alighted in other orchards and vineyards between here and North Carolina. He definitely knew the sharpshooters were planted. He tried to find out why. Obviously, there was no way Hy would communicate with Toby over anything. The natural person to discuss this with was Arch, thanks to his extensive knowledge. That turned out to be a fatal mistake.”

  “Hy wouldn’t have made the connection to revenge against Fair and Harry, would he?” Susan thought of three lives needlessly cast away.

  “Arch wasn’t taking any chances. Hy was piecing things together about the sharpshooters. And Arch was shaken that Hy had driven up before Fair when he’d just shot Toby. Arch’s plan backfired, and that was just dumb luck. He drove out the back way when he heard Hy’s truck coming in the front. He couldn’t see because of the hill there, but he assumed it was Fair. Fair would have been parked in the penitentiary for a good long time or bankrupted by the legal fees regardless of outcome. Arch said he couldn’t believe it when he found out we apprehended Hy. He thought if Fair were put in jail he could win back Harry. If Fair got off and they were bankrupted, well, he’d have some pleasure in seeing her suffer by staying with Fair.”

  “Flatface flew over Hy when he drove into the peach orchard,” Mrs. Murphy casually reminded Pewter and Tucker.

  “No way to tell Harry.” Pewter belched.

  “Pewter. Mind your manners,” Harry said.

  “You never burp,” Pewter sassed.

  “Could be worse. Could have come out the other end.” Tucker giggled.

  “I’m leaving.” Pewter, miffed, jumped off the bench seat. She jumped back up, though.

  “Ha! The day you walk away from food, the sun will rise in the west.” Mrs. Murphy swung her tail with vigor.

  “The next thing Arch realized, obvious now, is that Harry would figure it out, too. It might take her a little longer; she’d have more resistance to the thought. Dominos.” Cooper finished off her ham sandwich and longingly stared at the cherry cobbler. She’d wait until everyone else finished their meal before grabbing dessert.

  “If it weren’t for Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, Arch might have gotten away with it.” Harry glanced up at Mrs. Murphy, who was glowing with the praise.

  “He wouldn’t have gotten away with it, Harry. He might have killed you, God forbid, but we would have nailed him, because I think he would have run,” Cooper said forcefully.

  “Where’s Rollie in all this?” Fair wondered.

  “Shocked. Chauntal, too. I had to tell Rollie he had been a suspect and why. Didn’t much like that, either, but he admitted he had been, in his words, ‘extremely aggressive in business.’ His next concern was if he might be sued. Arch is his business partner. I told him he wouldn’t be the first person to have a business partner in jail. I also told him,” Cooper looked to Harry, then Fair, “that you weren’t the kind of people to do that.”

  “Thank you,” Fair simply replied.

  “Guess I should thank Matilda, Flatface, and little Simon, too. I told you all what happened earlier.” Harry smiled.

  “Matilda didn’t do it because she cares about you. She was pissed that Arch squished her eggs.”

  “You don’t know that.” Tucker used her paw to wipe her whiskers.

  “They lay their eggs and forget them. Snakes don’t take care of their babies,” Pewter announced with authority.

  “Could be that Matilda is different.” Tucker defended the blacksnake, although she didn’t much like her.

  “She’s different, all right. She’s working on being the largest blacksnake in America.” Mrs. Murphy inhaled the clean air, a light current swirling down from the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  “Isn’t that the truth!” Pewter said in a burst of animation. “Bet her bite hurt so bad, Arch saw an hour’s worth of fireworks in a minute.”

  “Flatface came through.” Tucker smiled.

  “She complains about us, calls us groundlings, but she does come through. She can’t admit we’re all together.” Pewter puffed out her chest.

  Mrs. Murphy, noticing the expansion, said, “Are you going to burp again?”

  “No,” came the swift, indignant reply.

  Mrs. Murphy lowered her voice. “Is it going to be worse?”

  “I am not going to hurl. I didn’t eat that much. I was actually sensible.”

  This barefaced l
ie struck both Mrs. Murphy and Tucker speechless.

  Mrs. Murphy sat up, stretched, and looked at Simon. “He ate his raspberry penny candy. Now he’s playing with the cell phone.”

  “Wait until she gets billed from Rio de Janiero.” Pewter’s good humor was restored by imagining another’s distress.

  “He can’t use the phone. Simon’s not bright enough to figure it out,” Tucker said. “I don’t mean to be ugly, but really, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  “He’ll push buttons. He may not know what he’s doing, but he’ll get something going. He’s pulled out the antenna.” Pewter was loving this.

  “Harry will cut off the service to the phone. Might take her a day to think of it, but she’ll go get another phone and transfer the numbers. Of course, who knows? By that time maybe he will have made a call.” Mrs. Murphy entered into the spirit of this.

  “And when that music plays he’ll throw the cell phone in the air, squeal, and run for his nest.” Pewter laughed loudly.

  The humans, not privy to the animals’ conversation, had been talking about why anyone would kill, but especially someone like Arch, as it was hopeless. How could he dream of winning Harry back by harming Fair?

  Of course, Arch didn’t think she’d know he set Fair up.

  “Finally, he snapped and figured if he couldn’t have Harry, no one could have her.” BoomBoom felt she’d settled the issue.

  “‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.’ ” Miranda quoted Romans, Chapter 12, Verse 19.

  “The grapes of wrath!” Pewter piped up.

  “Oh, Pewter.” Mrs. Murphy wrinkled her nose.

  “You’re just jealous that you didn’t think of it.” Pewter again puffed out her fluffy chest. “Sour puss.”

  Dear Reader,

  All this study of grapes interested me because birds come to grapes. But really, I would have rather written a book about cultivating catnip. Mother declared that would have limited application.

  Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not giving up on my catnip idea. Sooner or later, I’ll get my way. For one thing, I hid her favorite pair of socks. Small revenge, you say. Ha. Imelda Marcos has shoes. Mother has socks. For one thing they are more affordable than a closet full of shoes. So if she sees things my way, I will retrieve the socks.

  On May 16, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5–4 that laws banning direct shipment of wine to consumers in other states is unconstitutional. Impromptu celebrations filled Virginia. I note here that a Virginian will use any excuse for a party; they are excessively convivial.

  All’s well here. Hope your life is full of mice, moles, voles, butterflies, and the occasional inattentive bird.

  In Catitude,

  Sneaky Pie

  Dear Reader,

  I just proofread the Cast of Characters and note that my coauthor rearranged things, citing the animals as the most important characters.

  Her ego is in a gaseous state, ever-expanding. However, I must get up the second cutting of hay, since a thunderstorm seems more than likely this afternoon. It really is true, you make hay while the sun shines. There’s no time to fix this and off it goes to my wonderful, wry editor, Danielle Perez.

  If Sneaky’s done anything else, I won’t know about it until I receive the bound galleys. Too late then.

  You know, it’s hell to work with a cat. They really are smarter than we are. Have you ever gotten anyone to feed you, pay your bills, give you the best chair in the house, tell you how beautiful you are, and groom you daily? Me, neither.

  Yours,

  About the Authors

  RITA MAE BROWN and SNEAKY PIE BROWN, a tiger cat rescued from the local ASPCA, have collaborated on fourteen previous Mrs. Murphy mysteries, the most recent being Cat’s Eyewitness. They live in Afton, Virginia, with many other rescued animals.

  Books by Rita Mae Brown

  with Sneaky Pie Brown

  WISH YOU WERE HERE

  REST IN PIECES

  MURDER AT MONTICELLO

  PAY DIRT

  MURDER, SHE MEOWED

  MURDER ON THE PROWL

  CAT ON THE SCENT

  SNEAKY PIE’S COOKBOOK FOR MYSTERY LOVERS

  PAWING THROUGH THE PAST

  CLAWS AND EFFECT

  CATCH AS CAT CAN

  THE TAIL OF THE TIP-OFF

  WHISKER OF EVIL

  CAT’S EYEWITNESS

  Books by Rita Mae Brown

  THE HAND THAT CRADLES THE ROCK

  SONGS TO A HANDSOME WOMAN

  THE PLAIN BROWN RAPPER

  RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE

  IN HER DAY

  SIX OF ONE

  SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

  SUDDEN DEATH

  HIGH HEARTS

  STARTING FROM SCRATCH: A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITERS’ MANUAL

  BINGO

  VENUS ENVY

  DOLLEY: A NOVEL OF DOLLEY MADISON IN LOVE AND WAR

  RIDING SHOTGUN

  RITA WILL: A MEMOIR OF A LITERARY RABBLE-ROUSER

  LOOSE LIPS

  OUTFOXED

  HOTSPUR

  FULL CRY

  SOUR PUSS

  A Bantam Book / March 2006

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This 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, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2006 by American Artists, Inc.

  Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Michael Gellatly

  Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, Rita Mae.

  Sour Puss : a Mrs. Murphy mystery / Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown;

  illustrations by Michael Gellatly.

  p. cm.

  1. Haristeen, Harry (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Murphy, Mrs. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—Virginia—Fiction. 4. Women cat owners—Fiction. 5. Virginia—Fiction. 6. Cats—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3552.R698S63 2006

  813'.54—dc22 2005053595

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90238-9

  v3.0