The Litter of the Law (20 page)

The two cats entered the tack room just as Harry finished telling Fair about her failure to find any information on the mysterious name.

“Here.” He leaned over, typed a bit, then stood back. “You did the logical thing. You assumed Walter was a student’s name because the paper was found in the teacher’s desk. I just punched in his name to see what would show up. There you go.” Fair started to read over her shoulder. “Hmm, not so good,” he said.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Harry, delighted that her husband was smart, was equally put out by her own slowness on this subject.

She read along with him. “ ‘
Paper genocide
is often the term used to describe the actions of Walter Ashby Plecker, the government employee who was head of Vital Statistics in Virginia from 1912 to 1946.’ ”

Fair continued. “ ‘Plecker replaced the term
Indian
with the term
colored
on all official documents, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, and voter registration forms.’ ” He stepped back a moment. “Paper genocide.”

She looked up at her husband. “Fair, what does it mean exactly?”

“I’m not sure but I think it means that if everyone is jammed under one umbrella, you can treat or mistreat everyone the same. This is bizarre.” He read more as she scrolled down the text. “ ‘Members of Virginia Indian tribes are severely handicapped in proving they are indeed Indians according to federal standards. They can’t apply for scholarships or receive federal funds for housing, health care, or economic development.’ ” He stopped
looking at the screen, looked at his wife. “And, of course, they can’t open casinos, which brings in big bucks. Wait a minute, here. Says the Virginia tribes do not want to open casinos and have signed away those rights.” He’d returned his gaze to the computer screen.

“Fair, this is a terrible thing.” She read more on the subject. “ ‘Seven Virginia governors, irrespective of party affiliation, have supported federal recognition of Virginia’s Indians.’ But, in so many words, they’ve been told to sit on a tack.”

“Hey, look at this. No Virginia tribe member can return their ancestors’ bones to a rightful and respectful burial. Harry, this is outrageous. I mean, I had no idea. This is one of the most disgusting things I have ever read.”

“Well,” Harry said, “a bill, H.R. 783, the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act of 2011, is presently working its way through Congress. Yeah, right. And how many bills prior to this have died in one subcommittee or another?”

Fair rarely swore but he let it fly. “Bastards.”

“Walter Ashby Plecker appears to have been the biggest bastard of the bunch, and it’s just rolled on from there.” Stunned and deeply disturbed, Harry clicked off her computer. “Let’s call Coop,” she said, standing.

“Why?”

“Come on. Let’s go inside and use the house line. Anything ever spoken on a cellphone is out there somewhere.”

Intrigued, he followed his wife into the kitchen, as did the two cats and the dog.

Harry rang Cooper up on the kitchen wall phone and explained what she and Fair had discovered about Walter Ashby Plecker. “It’s only a scrap of paper but maybe you should ask Sarah Price if you can go through Hester’s desk to see if there’s a link. After all, Hester
had Cherokee blood on her mother’s side, and Josh was a member of the Upper Mattaponi tribe.”

“I’ve asked Sarah to go through Hester’s things on Monday, and I’ll be there with her.”

Urgency in her voice, Harry prodded. “Move it up. Go tomorrow, Sunday, if she’ll do it.”

“Harry, this isn’t much to go on.”

“It’s a long shot, a really long shot, Cooper, but right now it’s one of the few links between the two murders, other than both corpses were dressed for Halloween, cleverly disguised.”

A long, long pause followed this. Over the phone line, Harry could almost hear Cooper’s mind whirring. “All right.”

Husband and wife remained silent after Harry hung up.

Finally, Fair said, “While you were on your computer in the barn, I was on mine. Come on. I have something to show you.”

Once inside his small, tidy office, he showed her an article reporting that jobs exposing women to plastics and man-made chemicals greatly elevate a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer.

He pointed to the screen. “A long-term study of more than two thousand women in Ontario found those who worked for at least ten years in food canning and automotive plastics developed cancer at a rate five times higher than women in other jobs. Chemicals such as BPA—bisphenol A—are to blame.”

She replied, “I’m a farmer. Well, I worked in the post office after college. I’ve checked out fine at every exam for the last two years, and after my next checkup, I won’t have to go back for six months. I’m okay.”

Fair, who had felt shocked, frightened, and useless when his wife was diagnosed with stage I breast cancer two years ago, still carried with him the fear that it might return. Because of this, he
was vigilant concerning cancer research and treatments. “Read on.”

“Pesticide exposure is also elevated for female farm workers.” She quieted for a moment. “I rarely use much of anything.”

“What about your father?”

She nodded. “He used more. Cut back later on, but he said that in the beginning they thought those things were a godsend.”

“Our air, food, and water are loaded with chemicals unheard of even fifty years ago. BPA and phthalates, to name a few, are known hormone disrupters. I see so much more cancer in horses than I did when I started practicing as a vet.” Harry’s husband looked stricken.

“Honey, my cancer is not coming back,” she assured him.

“I know.” He kissed her cheek. “But now that you’ve been through it, I want to keep abreast of recent research, forgive the pun.”

They both laughed and she hugged him when he stood up. “You’re stuck with me.”

“Better be, which reminds me: Carry your father’s old snubnosed .38.”

“I can’t shoot cancer cells.”

“No, but you can’t keep your nose out of those two murders. I know you. Just carry the gun.”

“A
Montblanc Diplomat,” Cooper said the next afternoon, holding up the fancy pen, which she had fetched from the drawer of Hester’s desk.

“She didn’t have much or spend much, but what she had was the very best.” Sarah smiled, remembering her aunt’s lectures on prudent expenditures. “If she was going to fork out cash, it had to be for something that would last.”

“This certainly will.” Cooper studied the gold point. “Medium.”

“How do you know so much about pens?”

Cooper laughed. “How do you?”

“Drilled into my head: Write in your own hand on good paper. Always write a thank-you and a condolence, and, of course, the condolence should never be on pastel paper. The rules, but I’m glad I know them. Of course, who in my generation practices such etiquette?”

“We’re close in age. I kind of think these things are coming back. I mean good stationery, fountain pens, elegant clothing, and hats for men, too. Cycles. Then again, how many butt cracks can you observe before you decide that maybe low-rise trousers are not the way to go?”

Sarah, emitting peals of laughter, snatched a heavy wooden ruler from the desk. “This would solve a lot of problems in that regard.”

Cooper laughed, too, as they both kept rooting through the long drawer of the antique desk.

Sarah pulled out a Smythson leather-bound day calendar. “Probably you should keep this, and take a lot of time with it.”

“Right.” Cooper ran her forefinger over the textured leather. “I don’t see a computer anywhere in here.”

“Aunt H didn’t have one at home, just one at the stand, which you know about. I’d bug her about it but she said when she came home she didn’t want to think about work.”

“We’ve already got someone working on the store computer with Lolly. Lolly still needs it to transact business. Working in the evening, our computer whiz found sales, purchases, and a soil map for Albemarle County with the farms she did business with clearly marked. Wherever she bought anything from anyone, she checked their soils. She really was a very thorough person.”

“About most everything. Dad was that way, too. ‘If you’re going to do it, do it right.’ Must have heard that a thousand times.” Sarah sighed and smiled. “I miss them. I will miss their generation and my grandparents’ generation. I never really thought about it much before.” She blinked. “Sorry. You’re here to go through Aunt H’s effects and I’m babbling on.”

“Not babble. It does kind of dawn on you that nobody is here forever. Then you have to realize you won’t be here forever either. I see enough death in my line of work to give me great respect for life.”

Sarah tilted her head. “Officer, that’s a wonderful thought.”

“Will you call me Cooper? I’m not even in uniform. Thank God. I mean, have you ever seen a law enforcement uniform that looked good on a woman?”

“Now that you mention it, there’s never quite enough room for …” Sarah made a rolling motion over her breasts.

Again they both laughed.

“Nothing here,” Cooper said, glancing at an empty drawer. “There’s still this big one on the bottom, the double drawer. Let me get on my knees and hand you the files.” She did just that.

Sarah arranged the files in neat piles. “Hmm,” she said, reading the tabs. “A lot on fertilizer, pesticides, wildlife studies. County soil and water maps.”

“Probably hard copies of the maps that are on the work computer.” Cooper pulled out the map file, flipped it open, and unfolded a large county map.

Sarah reached into the open folder. “Here’s the info key.”

Cooper studied the numbers and the outlines, all in different colors. “Number one is her own holdings. Pretty good soil. Number two is eastern Albemarle. Hmm, not as much produce over there. She has most of it marked as hay.” Cooper ran her finger back to western Albemarle. “Morrowdale, that’s a beautiful farm out on Garth Road, where we found the first body. According to Hester, good soil, but she has the pesticide sign near some of the acres. I guess that means they were sprayed.”

“Look at all three yellow outlines. Someone owns a lot of property,” Sarah remarked.

Cooper checked the key again. “That’s Buddy Janss, the big man who served punch at the reception. He rents most of it.”

“He must be rich.”

“Land poor might be another way to put it.” Cooper smiled. “He owns maybe eight hundred acres outright. Rents the rest, so he has a lot of money sunk into soil improvement. That’s the conundrum of renting land. You usually need to improve it. Most landowners, especially suburban or city people who buy in the country, don’t want to spend money on their fields and don’t realize
how important it is. Buddy dutifully fertilizes, weeds, tests soil. He doesn’t want to sell his acres if he can help it. And he’d buy what he rents if he could.”

“Who is in chartreuse?”

Cooper ran her finger down the list. “Neil Jordan. Hester marked what’s owned, what’s rented, and what’s for sale. She must have updated this weekly.”

Cooper folded the map and placed it back in the manila folder, then pulled out the file on fertilizers. “This is full of equations,” she exclaimed.

Sarah studied the figures. “Aunt H took high school chemistry. Maybe she took more when she was at Mary Baldwin.”

“Bet she did. This stuff is complicated.” Cooper shook her head.

“The brochures aren’t.” Sarah handed her a pile of glossy brochures for fertilizer products, featuring photos of lush fields of corn, wheat, soybeans, even orchard rows.

Cooper examined a pamphlet. “Here’s one that Neil Jordan wrote on the back of, telling your aunt to call him if she had questions. It’s for a new fertilizer.”

“If it was a natural product, she probably did call him, but she was wary, as you know, and she was really opposed to anything petroleum based,” said Sarah. “She would say something about it to me every now and then, but not too much since I don’t understand agriculture.”

“Did she ever ask you about your work?”

“A little. Enough to tell me it’s boring, which it is.” Sarah looked directly at Cooper. “Insurance is a good thing to have but so much of it is oversold on fears. I’ve done well, but I, well …” She shrugged. “I think I can walk away from it now, thanks to Aunt H.”

“She must have loved you very much.”

Sarah’s eyes teared up, then she laughed her tinkling laugh. “I was her only heir. I suppose she had to love me.”

“Big Mim put the word out that you’re going to move here. Live in Hester’s house. Keep the family place alive. Oh, Big Mim runs Crozet, which I should have told you or someone should have told you before the reception.”

“Susan Tucker filled me in on all the locals. I learned who, what, when, and where, and sometimes why. Aunt H, when I’d come on visits, didn’t much talk about other people.”

Chin on her hand now, Cooper pulled out another folder, flipping it open.

She sat up straighter. “Here are the procedures for officially establishing an American Indian group as an Indian tribe.” She read a footnote. “The seven criteria are presented here in abbreviated form. ‘For the complete federal text, refer to 25 CFR Part 83.’ Huh?”