The Litter of the Law (13 page)

“Wasn’t Buddy friends with Hester?” Neil asked, as he had only lived in the area a few years.

“For years and years.” Harry smiled. “You know Hester
wouldn’t sell anything that was sprayed or if the seeds had been genetically modified.”

“She was a crank,” Neil said. “Not that I wished her dead, but really.”

“Hester was an eccentric,” the reverend said in his most diplomatic tone, “but she worked hard for causes she believed in, she mentored younger people like Tazio, and I expect any of us could be considered a crank at one time or another.”

“Not you.” Harry grinned and the men laughed.

“You should live with him,”
Elocution called out from her fuzzy den on the floor.

“He feeds us Fancy Feast and he even tried to see if we’d chew on greenies,”
Cazenovia chided her from the windowsill.
“He’s the best.”

“Yeah, Elo,”
Lucy Fur chimed in.
“Button your lip.”

“All right, all right,”
the Lutheran cat said, giving in.

Betty arrived with a tray of hot cocoa and sugar cookies. The Reverend Jones jumped up to carry it and place it on the table.

Wesley returned to the subject of Hester. “Horrible. Harry, you have endured two shocks. Finding that young man and then Hester.”

“Did,” she agreed. “As I didn’t know the fellow who was killed, it was a shock and that was all, but Hester, that hurt. Yes, she had her ways, but she was a good soul and really pretty smart. I mean a lot smart, actually.”

“That she was,” Wesley agreed. “The last time I stopped by the stand, we got on the subject of crop irrigation. I don’t remember how we did get on it—you know with Hester, one thing didn’t lead to another, it jumped to another. But anyway, she was telling me that farmers have been pulling water out of the Ogallala Aquifer since the early 1950s and some of those irrigation booms are a half mile long. A half mile!”

“Great day,” Reverend Jones exclaimed.

“It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?” said Wesley. “A half-mile boom spinning around a fixed water pipe? But there’s a lot of talk, consideration in a lot of the affected states, about cutting back on irrigation because the droughts are dropping water levels, as is all the population growth.”

“Where are water levels dropping? Which states?” Neil asked.

Fortified by the cocoa, Wesley leapt in. “Neil, it’s eastern Wyoming, about all of Nebraska, southern South Dakota, eastern Colorado and New Mexico, a huge swath of Kansas, Oklahoma’s Panhandle, and a chunk of Texas. The water shortage is huge.”

“The breadbasket,” Harry thought out loud.

“For us. For the world, too, really,” Wesley said. “Hester had been reading up on it, just like she was always reading about chemicals, her history interests, that sort of thing. I was so impressed at the facts she had at her fingertips. She felt if farmers didn’t cut back, wells would run dry and that would become a disaster, a true disaster. Irrigation accounts for one-third of our nation’s annual water demand. I told her that genetic engineering could create more drought-tolerant corn, soybeans, etc. We could reduce our irrigation, but she didn’t want to hear that.”

They laughed.

Harry stood up. “It was good to see you all and I’m glad I have what I think is good news about the roof. Tell you what we could do for Hester: Let’s sell all those tickets for the Halloween Hay-ride. The funds go to the library, and we know how much Hester loved the Crozet Library. Will you all help me?”

“It would be an honor,” Wesley immediately replied.

“Of course,” Neil agreed.

In his gravelly voice, the Reverend Jones said, “I can preach a good sermon on this. We’ll sell those tickets. We’ll sell out! Thou hast put gladness in my heart.” He smiled. “Psalm 4:7. If we sell those tickets, it will put gladness in all our hearts.”

“H
ow many miles have you racked up on this car?” Harry asked later that day. The two friends were headed back to that shopping mecca, Warehouse Number 9.

In the driver’s seat, Susan glanced down at her Audi’s odometer. “Let’s see … 131,839. I’m averaging about 40,000 miles per year. Engines are so well made these days they aren’t even broken in until 100,000 miles.”

Swaying slightly as they turned right at the stoplight in Dillwyn on Route 20, Harry said, “True. The advances in engine longevity are pretty fabulous. ’Course, my old ’78 rolls along, but I baby that truck, as you know. Actually, Susan, I really like driving without computer chips.”

“That’s you. I don’t care.” Susan smiled. “Is everyone asleep back there? It’s so quiet without the cats.”

Harry twisted to look. “Owen is curled up with his sister Tucker. That was one of the best litters you ever bred.”

“It was.” Susan nodded. “I loved breeding corgis, but it was so much work, and part of that work was making sure the puppies found the right homes. I love all dogs but I especially love corgis.”

“I love Tucker. Sometimes I think about the German shepherd
Mom and Dad had when I was a kid. That was a great dog. Funny how you can measure your life by animal lives.”

“Wonder if that scarecrow fellow had any pets.”

“No. Coop told me he lived an unencumbered life.”

“Sad,” Susan replied simply.

“I think so, too. What’s the purpose of being alive if you don’t have husbands, friends, cats, dogs, horses, birds, possums, more friends, and friends’ children? It just goes on and on. Mother used to say that if everyone in Virginia studied their bloodlines, we’d find out we are related. No one is all black, no one is all white. We’re all part of one another and that includes the Indians.”

“Can’t say ‘Indian’ anymore.”

“Sure about that? These labels we give ourselves are always changing.”

“Now, Harry. You look just like your father when you get muley.”

“Do I?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, dear.” Harry slumped in her seat slightly. “Daddy could be …”

“Yes, he could.”

They both laughed, remembering Harry’s much-loved and very original father.

“Today is going to be a mob scene at the store. People are feeling that change in the seasons, the holidays looming. Those credit cards start burning in one’s pocket.”

“Not mine,” Harry staunchly declared.

“It is possible to be too tight. I mean, Harry, you don’t have voice messaging on your phone because it costs an extra three dollars a month. That’s silly. Three dollars!”

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” Harry countered.

“ ’Tis, but you can carry it too far. Hey, where do I turn?”

“Left up ahead.”

Susan turned onto the Farmville main drag, then turned left again at Harry’s direction, and shortly the Audi station wagon was parked in the lot closest to Number 9 warehouse. As predicted, the place was packed.

Susan cracked the windows for the two dogs, although the day was brisk. “You all go back to sleep. We won’t be long.” She hoped this wasn’t a fib. She loved looking at furniture, fabrics, even lampshades.

The two women walked into Number 9, and Harry immediately pulled Susan to the Halloween display.

“Exactly the same,” Harry declared.

“As I didn’t see the corpse in the cornfield, I can only imagine what a human looked like as opposed to this.”

“But that’s just it. From a distance, they look exactly the same.”

Susan stood next to the ghosts. “No witches.”

“Not in this display. It’s ghosts, little goblins, pumpkins, and the scarecrow.” Harry sat down in a kitchen chair for a moment. “You know, I think of Hester hanging all that black and orange bunting at the stand, then last week trussing herself up in a witch costume while unloading produce. She did have such a funny sense of things, and you had to laugh. Why would anyone kill her? I’ve thought of everything, including her being a Russian spy. I mean wild stuff. Nah.” Harry shook her head.

“Me, too.” Susan looked around. “I’m going to walk through the floor. Won’t be long.”

“I’ll tag along.” Harry did.

“Look at this.” Susan pointed out a distressed bureau painted a sky blue. “That would look good in my workroom.”

“What do you need with a bureau in your workroom?”

“Store papers in it. Better looking than a file cabinet.”

“Yeah, I guess. Here.” Harry handed her a notebook and pencil from her coat pocket. “Write down the particulars. If you decide you want it, you can call. They deliver.”

“I forgot about that.” Susan scribbled down the item number and manufacturer.

Harry again tacked over to the Halloween display. “Whoever killed Josh Hill had to have seen this scarecrow. It looks exactly the same. So the killer is someone who comes through here regularly.”

“Maybe. It could also be someone with a good memory or someone who took a picture on their phone. That could be just about anyone.”

“You’re right. I’m jumping to conclusions.”

“They should make that an Olympic sport.” Susan put her hand under Harry’s elbow to steer her out of the store.

They walked over to Number 8, which had a courtyard featuring large outdoor sculptures for sale.

“I like the large horse.” Harry stood next to an almost life-sized horse resembling the horses of Piazza San Marco. “Can you imagine what would happen if I put one by the barn?”

Both women laughed. They knew the statue would spook the real horses, although eventually they would adjust.

Susan flipped the price tag over. “You’ll need smelling salts.”

Harry bent over to peer at the tag. “Nine thousand dollars!”

“You pay for your pleasures.” Susan checked her watch. “Speaking of which, if I stay here, I am going to spend money, and I don’t have it right now. Ned isn’t making as much at the law firm. He’s in session and there goes the income. He thought he could swing it, but there’s so much to do down in Richmond, so many meetings and so much material to master, plus he had to rent an apartment. It’s overwhelming. Yet he loves being in our House of Delegates. Anyway, I’m thinking of finding a job.”

Once they were back in the car and heading home, Harry said, “Your kids are out of the house. No reason you can’t work full-time.”

“When we graduated from college and I got my first job as a legal assistant, I remember shopping in the supermarket, seeing the women at the checkout counters and wondering what went wrong. You know what I mean? How did they wind up in that job?”

“I never thought about it. You were,
are
, better about that stuff than I am.” Harry put on her sunglasses.

“Well, I thought maybe those cashiers had picked the wrong man. He’d left them high and dry and with children. Or they were people who didn’t plan ahead and one day woke up at forty. As years rolled along, I realized that sometimes bad luck rolls over someone like a tide. I felt less superior after that. Now I look at those women and think it could be me, you know?”

Harry thought for a long time. “I don’t. Susan, I always knew I would farm.”

“But what if the crop failed year after year? What if you became injured?”

“I have had crops fail and I survived, on not much. I figure whatever happens, I can deal with it. ’Course, it’s easier now with Fair. My hardest times were without him.”

“It preys on my mind, finding Hester like that,” said Susan. “She never expressed fears. But I think maybe her ideas—like aliens being responsible for crop circles, stuff like that—maybe that was how she expressed fear.”

“Susan, you might be right. I don’t know. I don’t look into other people like you do or like Fair does; I kind of take everyone at face value.”

“What if they’re hiding behind a mask?”
Tucker wondered.

A
lthough two hundred and twenty years old, the organ at St. Luke’s sounded as good as the day it was installed, twenty years after the church’s cornerstone was laid, and possibly even better, for time had enriched the sounds. The early small congregations had worked tirelessly to afford such a wonderful organ. Subsequent generations of worshippers continued to give thanks.

This Sunday morning, even Cazenovia, Lucy Fur, and Elocution luxuriated in the deep reverberations of the low notes, the sparkle of the high. While Reverend Jones delivered his sermon, the three cats sat in the balcony along with the organist and the robed choir. Occasionally the choir would sing down below, but somehow their voices always sounded better from the balcony. As the cats often attended services, none of the choir members paid them any mind.