Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (19 page)

Accustomed to riding Thoroughbreds and her one special Saddlebred, Shortro, the barrel of the Irish Draught meant she couldn’t reach as far down with her leg. Sparkle Plenty—five years old and 16.2½ hands, the flashy chestnut she was riding this morning—moved so smoothly she didn’t feel that she would pop off.

“Aren’t you surprised at how cool it’s been?” Sue asked.

“The humidity creeps in by this time of year. I try to get all my outside chores done by noon. Go out again about five or six. The killer time is around three to five, don’t you think?”

Sue replied, “Yeah. I like fall. I’m not built for hot weather.”

Harry liked all four seasons, and changed the subject. “You battled thyroid cancer. I was just getting to know you when it was over. What did radiation do to you?”

“Unlike you, Harry, I drank mine. Actually, cancer turned out to be lucky for me. It was my dentist who found something wrong. I’d been so tired. He urged me to go to my doctor. Well, my body was making antibodies against my thyroid. I say lucky because I survived. My immune system—compromised before the cancer, which I didn’t know—came back strong when it was all over, thanks to good doctors.”

“I can’t imagine drinking radiation crap.” Harry grimaced.

“Gave me vertigo. I couldn’t move without throwing up. I never want to go through that again.” Sue whistled.

“I don’t like what I have to do. Can’t imagine not being able to stand up, walk, or ride.”

“You know, Harry, you go through what you must. I thought our ride would get your mind off cancer and”—she smiled—“onto Irish Draughts. I knew you’d never ridden one. I always bred and rode Thoroughbreds. As the years crept up, I decided I wanted a breed I could ride when I’m ninety.”

“Think you found it.” Harry smiled.

“Me, too.”

“Would you consider joining our committee? It’s work, but it’s not too overwhelming until the week before the race. And it’s a great group of girls.” Harry switched gears and hoped.

“No men?” Sue arched her eyebrow.

“Dr. Cory Schaeffer is the nominal head. The oncologists, they’re all so busy, they do what they can. Jennifer Potter even shows up for meetings sometimes. And so does Annalise Veronese. She says she sees the damage cancer does and she wants to help.” Harry paused. “You don’t have to answer me now.”

“I’d love to be part of it. Give me my marching orders.”

“I will.” Harry grinned. “I’m so glad you said yes. The best part is dinner after the real work is done. Everyone takes a turn, and we meet once a month until just before the race, then it’s once a week the last month before the five-K. You will laugh until you cry, the stuff that comes out. Alicia got us all laughing at the last meeting. She’d clipped a silly report from
The London Sunday Times
. So now everyone is clipping stupid stories for our next meeting—the aftermath meeting. We made a lot
of money on the race. Of course, having the BMW raffle was a big help.”

“Don’t you all have a dinner?”

“Next month. I’ll be sure to get you and Rick tickets. It’s a black-tie affair. God, I hate them.”

“Oh, Harry, you look good in an evening gown.”

“If only I could figure out how to walk in one.”

“The female dilemma!”

“Revenge would be to make the men wear an evening gown.” Sue giggled. “Fair Haristeen, six foot five inches, in a strapless. Oh, my Gawd.”

“It’s the heels. I’d pay to see him tottering in!” Harry envisioned Fair in four-inch heels, towering over everyone at six-ten.

“Men wore high heels at the Court of Louis the Fourteenth.”

“Gross. People see Louis the Fourteenth as such a great king. I figure he’s the one who set the stage for the French Revolution.” Harry disliked overadornment, regardless of the century.

“Could be. Come on, let’s canter,” Sue said, as they rode into the far rolling meadow at the back of her land, Wild Hare Farm.

Tucker, who’d been trotting with them, picked up speed as well. Other dogs would have run to the side or up front, but Tucker—bred to herd and to keep a sharp eye on cattle—ran behind the horses. If anyone strayed out of line, she would nip them right back. Corgis have an important job in this world.

•    •    •

Back at Sue’s barn, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter sat on a sweet-smelling hay bale. The F-150, parked in the drive, had all the windows down. Harry used the Volvo for town errands. Loath to run up miles on it because she wanted to drive it for a good ten years, she used the truck for country visits, hauling feed bags. So accustomed to firing up her beloved truck, Harry couldn’t quite get used to driving the Volvo for as many chores as she might.

Mrs. Murphy looked out the front door of the barn. “Yellow swallowtail.”

Pewter followed the flight of the beautiful insect.
“Easy to catch if they light on the low blooms of a butterfly bush.”

“That’s why Mom cuts those off.”

“It’s not fair. There must be millions of yellow swallowtails and black swallowtails in Virginia. If I kill a few, it’s not going to hurt the population,”
Pewter sensibly replied.

“Hurts her.”

“Murphy, she’s such a softie. Insects.”
Pewter puffed out her chest.
“Six legs! Who cares what happens to something with six legs?”

“She does. Haven’t you heard her lamenting about hive collapse?”
Mrs. Murphy lifted her right paw to lick it.

Pewter emitted a little puff of air.
“Every word. She said her mother and father
remembered
the same thing in the 1940s. It’s happening here again and in Europe. She said tests show certain chemicals in the bees. Well, I bet those chemicals weren’t there in the forties. How can anyone know what goes on in an insect’s brain? Especially humans. They don’t even know what’s going on in their own brains.”

“Aren’t we Mary Sunshine today?”
Mrs. Murphy tartly said.

“All I want are a few butterflies. As it is, Harry’s put the bluebird boxes so far from the house. I’m not going all that distance to sit under them.”

“She’d never forgive you if you killed a bluebird or an indigo bunting. I do think she’d reward you if you killed that blue jay that’s been dive-bombing her lately.”

“I will kill that bird if it’s the last thing I do.”
Pewter puffed out her magnificent gray chest even further.

“I’ll help you. Hateful. Hateful bird.”

“I just wish she weren’t such a softie, our mom,”
Pewter again lamented.
“She can’t help it, but you have to admit, Pewts, she’s cool in a crisis.”

“That she is,”
the gray cat readily agreed.

•    •    •

Good thing, for Harry at that moment encountered one.

The large meadow ended at a cul-de-sac, the end of Sue and Rick’s property. One could see the edges of an upscale subdivision east of this. The dirt road, which went nowhere, would someday probably be part of another subdivision. For now, the farmer who owned the adjoining acres, a good neighbor, hung on to them. But age was creeping up on
him. Sue feared she and her husband wouldn’t have the money to purchase the good pastureland if he sold due to infirmity. The last thing she wanted was a subdivision hard up on her own farm.

A deep drainage ditch also created a barrier at the easternmost edge of the land, curving toward the cul-de-sac.

A 1992 white Corolla sat in the middle of the cul-de-sac, nose pointed west, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. The driver’s door hung wide open. Someone sat behind the wheel, forearms bent at the elbow, elbows leaning on the steering wheel.

From a distance, this looked odd.

“Something’s not right,” Harry remarked.

The two women, walking the horses as they’d finished their bracing canter, picked up a trot toward the car.

They rode up onto the road.

Tucker immediately warned,
“Dead!”

The two horses snorted.

“Oh, my God.” Sue grimaced.

Harry dismounted, handing her reins to Sue. “Got your cell?”

“Harry, don’t go over there.”

“Call the sheriff’s department. Tell them Thadia Martin is dead at the end of Pheasant Lane, the dirt road off Barker’s Crossing Road.”

Accompanied by Tucker, Harry walked to the open door. Thadia, in rigor mortis, did not yet smell terrible. The night had been cool. The stink would come up by midday. If they hadn’t found her in two days, the odor would have been unbearable to all but vultures and dogs.

“Harry, don’t touch her.” Sue was aghast.

“I won’t. I don’t want to destroy evidence, but as we’re the first ones here, I should look.”

Sue tried to avoid looking at the macabre sight of a woman in her early forties, hands straight up, jaw wide open, eyes bulging. She couldn’t see Thadia’s legs under the steering wheel, which prevented them from becoming as bent as the arms. A body in rigor mortis is difficult to remove. That would be the ambulance team’s problem.

Sue marveled at Harry’s matter-of-fact approach. She did not marvel that Harry knew the deceased. Harry knew everybody.

Harry touched nothing. She carefully looked for a sign of struggle.

No struggle, but Thadia’s throat had been neatly slashed. Blood had spilled on her blouse; some had spurted on the windshield. Startling though this sight was, Harry’s curiosity kicked into high gear. She walked to the passenger door, did not open it—again, for fear of destroying fragile evidence. She peered in the window to see if she could get a view of Thadia’s right side.

A small carton, which she reckoned to be six inches square, rested on the passenger seat. Thadia’s purse was in the passenger-side footwell.

Harry walked close to the hood and peered in.

Thadia wore a short-sleeved buttoned blouse, her sweater thrown in the backseat. Harry noticed her bracelet. She returned to the driver’s side. The bracelet had slipped down to her elbow. Harry could clearly see it was a scarab bracelet and one scarab was missing. She’d not noticed the bracelet on Thadia before, but then one doesn’t wear the same jewelry every day.

“Harry,” Sue called.

“Coming.” Under her breath, Harry muttered, “Shit.”

Tucker, hard by Harry’s leg, looked up and stated,
“She never had a chance.”

T
he chill dissipated while Harry and Sue waited for the sheriff’s department. Given that there was a nasty accident on Garth Road, it took Rick and Coop a half hour to reach Pheasant Lane.

Rick slammed the squad car door. Furious at the delay, he merely nodded at Harry and Sue while walking to the corpse. Upset herself, Coop first questioned her neighbor, then Sue.

“Look at her throat, Coop,” Harry instructed after telling Coop all she observed on first finding Thadia. “Neat work.”

Sue had less to tell, although she had taken note of the time they’d found Thadia: 10:13
A.M.

“You two can leave now. I know where to find you.” Coop waved them off.

“One more thing, she’s wearing a scarab bracelet. One is missing. I still have the one I found in Paula’s driveway, if you want it,” Harry said.

Tucker wished she could communicate with the humans. Fear, a powerful perfume, lingers. A dog can detect such an odor even after dogs pass. There was no fear odor on Thadia. That meant either she wasn’t afraid of her killer or the killer struck in a nanosecond.

Coop joined Rick, leaving light footprints in the dirt, for the dampness still clung to the road, the dew just melting on those fields and roads now touched by the sun.

He looked up at his partner. “Given the rigor, I’d say she was killed
last night. It was forty-eight degrees at my house, cooler here. That factors in.”

“No sign of struggle.” Coop exhaled.

“No stranglehold or someone reaching out, face-to-face, to throttle her.” Rick stood back. That would leave small bruise marks. There were none. He again put his head into the driver’s side. “Just one clean cut.”

“Wish the photographer would get here.”

“Me, too. I’d like to get her body into the cooler. And I want the fingerprint team here pronto.”

A fly buzzed near Coop’s head. She shooed it away. “Nothing touched her. No nibbles. For a night hunter, this was a free lunch.”