Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (12 page)

A nine-hundred-percent price rise is beyond comprehension.

She hadn’t fertilized for two years. The price to spread chicken poop floated out of reach, too. You burn gas putting it down.

It made Harry miserable. Just thought it was the worst. She laughed at herself as she watched Venus begin her majestic ascent, shining her lovelight over all living things, fascinating Harry as she had fascinated people since they cast their eyes upward. Another hour and Harry would be able to identify the constellations.

“Why she’s doing that chuckle thing people do?”
wondered Pewter, sitting on the fence next to Mrs. Murphy, who sat next to Harry.

“Don’t know.”
Mrs. Murphy put her paw on Harry’s forearm.

Wedged next to Harry’s leg, Tucker was determined not to let her beloved human out of her sight.

“Someone wants their chin scratched.”

“I prefer tuna,”
Pewter replied.

“Do you ever think of anything other than your expanding stomach?”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“World peace.”
Pewter giggled, making the odd little intake of breath that accompanies the feline giggle. Tucker howled with glee.

“What’s cookin’, kids?” Harry scratched Mrs. Murphy’s chin.

“If only you could understand us, you’d be laughing, too.”
Tucker sighed, as she often felt frustrated with human limitations.

“You know,” Harry spoke to them, “what a clear crisp evening. Must be about fifty-five degrees, and it’s seven-thirty. Glad I wore my sweater. Of course, you all are always dressed just right for the weather.” As she rubbed her hand over Mrs. Murphy’s back, her undercoat shed out.

“Murph, you shed too much,”
Pewter grumbled, as some of the undercoat landed on her lovely gray fur.

“You shed as much as I do.”

“Do not. No one sheds as much as you do. You’re like a dalmatian.”

“Pewter, you’re trying to start something.”
Tucker stood on her hind legs to get closer to Pewter.

Harry—even on her two legs—recognized the signs of Pewter gearing up to be a bad girl. Sometimes she’d taunt the others. Sometimes she’d be asleep, wake up, shoot straight up in the air, race around the house, then pounce on Tucker. The dog suffered endless abuse from the cat, who would wrap her front legs around the corgi to wrestle her to the ground. Truth be told, the dog loved it. Tucker would growl, but she’d flop down as though the cat really had thrown her. Sometimes Mrs. Murphy joined in, but usually she watched, because with her Pewter sometimes unleashed her claws, if only for effect. Still, it made the tiger cat mad.

“You know”—Harry folded her hands together as Venus, bright now, seemed a pure beacon in a deepening sky—“I fretted so during the oil crisis, which corresponded to the tail end of those wicked drought years. My hay burned up in the fields, too, from that unremitting heat. Thought it couldn’t get much worse.”

“We remember.”
Tucker dropped back down.

“We remember because you kept us up at night, walking the floor.”
Pewter relished the negative detail, as always.

“Now I wonder if the rains will water down my grapes, so to speak. Remember, this is the second year, so I can harvest them and sell them to a vintner. Boy, I hope I can make a little money. I must have been out of my mind to put in a quarter acre of grapes. Hardest work ever, and there’s so much to learn.”

“They look good,”
Mrs. Murphy hopefully meowed.

“Now this. Before, I worried about my crops; now I’m worried about myself. I know I’m going to live. Really, you all, I do.”

“Of course you’re going to live!”
the two cats meowed in unison.

“You can’t die, Mom. I couldn’t live without you.”
Tucker’s soft brown eyes looked so sad.

“Sounds funny, but I believe I’ll know when I’m going to die, and it’s
not now. But I am so scared of being cut and then radiation. God, I don’t want to do it.”

“You’re doing it,”
Tucker firmly ordered her.

“I feel betrayed by my own body, and then I think about Paula Benton. Dead, sitting on the stool at her potting shed, head down on the table. She was about my age. I don’t know. Dumb things are running through my head.”

“That’s natural,”
Tucker consolingly murmured.

“Certainly is. Dumb things are always going through her head.”
Pewter giggled again.

“Pewter, you’re a pill tonight.”
Mrs. Murphy rubbed her cheeks against Harry’s arm.

“Hey, I love her. But she is what she is, and humans can’t help it. They’re, well, limited. And I think she does know when she will die. This isn’t her time, but from what I hear everyone saying, sounds like she’ll be pooped out before the treatments are over.”

As the sky turned Prussian blue, Harry looked back at the farmhouse, her birthplace. The light went on in the living room. She saw the glow through the kitchen window. Fair would be building a fire, since the temperature would dip into the low forties tonight.

What a wonderful man, she thought. Just a good guy. She needed this time to herself. Harry thought best when it was just her and her animals.

Tomahawk, her old Thoroughbred, still in great shape, lifted his lovely head to watch a great blue heron fly high overhead.
“Going late to the nest, aren’t you?”

“Fishing was too good to leave,”
the large, beautiful bird called down in his harsh voice, so at odds with his body.

Shortro, a five-year-old Saddlebred, given to Harry by Renata de Carlo, a client of Joan Hamilton’s at Kalarama Farm, also followed the bird, its huge wingspan impressive as he dipped lower, his beautiful colors more visible now in the twilight.
“Can you imagine flying?”

“Sort of,”
the older horse replied.
“I don’t think anyone below me would much like it.”

It took Shortro a minute to get it, then he laughed. Both horses walked over to Harry to have their heads rubbed. Mrs. Murphy, on excellent terms with all the horses, daintily stepped onto Tomahawk’s back.

Harry observed her four-footed friends and thought how fortunate she was to have them and how lucky she was to have her human friends, too.

Last week she’d told Susan the minute she received her results. Tonight all her close friends and even a few close acquaintances had come out to the farm with food.

Even Aunt Tally, at one hundred years of age, arrived with her best friend and former William Woods University classmate, Inez Carpenter, D.V.M. As Inez was a mere ninety-eight, she rubbed this in.

Inez hired Fair shortly after he graduated from Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine. As one of the nation’s best equine vets, specializing in reproduction, she had taught him so very much, and his association with her had also enhanced his own reputation. Inez did not suffer fools gladly. Her unique skills garnered her a reputation in what was once an exclusively male field. Young women vets worshipped Inez as a groundbreaker. Also, throughout her career, Inez was happy to help a young vet who showed promise and was dedicated. While she was as happy guiding a male as a female, she understood the barriers the women faced. Her low-key, sensible approach prevented many a meltdown.

Inez had been going to live with Fair and Harry this year, as she had lost a lot of money in the stock market. Also, age was taking its toll. But Aunt Tally threw a major hissy, so Inez had moved in with her.

In the living room, Harry asked her how she liked rooming with the ultra-rich Tally Urquhart. Inez answered, “I’ve sat down in the lap of luxury, and I don’t want to get up again.”

Franny Howard showed up, a surprise. Susan had called her. Harry had bought a set of BF Goodrich all-terrain ten-ply tires the day after her diagnosis. She had not said anything, even though Franny would likely have been helpful. Harry was reticent to talk about herself. She’d talk about the weather, farming, books, horses, world events, but she talked about herself only with Susan, Coop, BoomBoom, and, of course, her husband.

The four tires would have cost $796, and Franny, true to her word,
gave her a preacher’s price and knocked off $150. At the farm, this raucous evening, Franny gave Harry all the information she needed if she wished to join her support group. She offered to pick her up and drive her, too, if it was a punk day.

Harry’s consolation dinner turned into a lively party. Aunt Tally belted out some tunes from old musicals. Tucker sang along, too. Harry forgot for a while that her operation would be early Monday morning.

Now, after her walk, she’d had her fill of the starry sky. Even with her sweater, Harry felt the night air’s chill. “Going in.”

Tomahawk showed his teeth, smacking his gums.
“Good luck. We love you.”

The animals echoed this, all of them:
“We love you.”

Hearing their murmurs, although not understanding, breathing in the beauty of the night, tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away, but they kept coming. “I do so love this life, and I love you all.”

T
hat same Friday evening, Al Vitebsk sat at his cleared dining room table. Nita perched across from him, computer up and running. Al used a yellow legal pad. White bankers’ boxes were stacked in two large groups. The group to his left had been reviewed. Those remaining on his right would take days.

Big Al kept his own advice. He put his own backup records for Pinnacle Storage into a self-storage unit in Waynesboro. His records, along with so much else at Pinnacle, had been destroyed.

He spent hours at the building with JoJo and his employees, ascertaining what had survived. Surprisingly, even with the intense heat, much of the material in the vaults remained intact, including old handwritten records. Stored outside the vaults in heavy metal trays lined with fire retardant, the floppy disks had melted. All those trays looked like rectangular candleholders filled with an odd wax. Any disks not in the vault suffered a similar fate. The thumb drives, in smaller, thick trays, also had incinerated.

Rental prices depended on the amount of space the records took up as well as the actual physical type of storage. The thick vaults carried the highest price tag. The price decreased according to the reduction of space and the manner of storage. A simple file cabinet was cheap but offered no protection against fire or flood.

Each type of storage carried its own waiver. The file-cabinet policy
stated in bold print that those cabinets offered very little protection. Each renter signed a contract.

Big Al painstakingly combed through each signed waiver, which also included the type of stored materials: paper, floppy disks, disks, thumb drives.

Nita entered this on the computer as Big Al read off the information in the waivers. JoJo slept, his head on a fuzzy bear toy. The dog tried to stay awake to help, but hour after hour of two humans sitting opposite each other, with little to no movement, sent JoJo into dreamland.

Nita looked up from the screen. “Two four- by two-foot vault trays, locked. Cantor and Fowler.” She named a small, good law firm.

“Right. All records survived.”

Reaching into the banker’s box, his big hands grabbed a thin folder on top of three fat ones. He flipped it open. “Paula Benton. One four-drawer file cabinet, locks on each drawer.” He sighed. “All gone.”

“Do we notify her next of kin?” Nita, glasses pinching the bridge of her nose, removed them.

“Yes.”

Nita checked Paula’s name with a red pen. “We’re going to have to draw up form letters for each type of storage unit.”

“I know. I know.” Al shook his head. “That was a loss. Paula.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Let’s hope some of her stored materials might be on her home computer, but,” he read, “yearbooks. Paper files. Some floppy disks.”

“Ah.” Nita put another red check by Paula’s name. “Naturally, honey, I will personalize the form letters. The last paragraph will list what you have on the waivers.”

“The crew can help.”

By “crew,” Big Al meant the four people who worked in the building, their hours meticulously arranged so Pinnacle always had two people in it during business hours. No one worked at night, although there was a cleaning service that vacuumed, mopped up each evening from seven to nine. There wasn’t much to do, as Pinnacle Records didn’t generate much foot traffic. Still, Big Al wanted the place to be clean. For one thing, he believed dust destroyed records. Even the big vaults collected small amounts of dust. Each time those heavy doors were opened, dust
entered. He’d unlock the vaults once a week and stayed while they were cleaned. They received the least traffic. Not many people visited their records or checked them out. If they did, they retired to a twelve-by-ten room with a long table, where they could place their boxes or papers to examine.