Murder at Monticello (9 page)

17

Harry and Warren Randolph grunted as they picked up the York rake and put it on the back of her truck.

“Either this thing is getting heavier or I'm getting weaker,” Warren joked.

“It's getting heavier.”

“Hey, come on for a minute. I want to show you something.”

Harry opened the door to the truck so Tucker and Mrs. Murphy could leap out to freedom. They followed Harry to the Randolphs' beautiful racing barn, built in 1892. Behind the white frame structure with the green standing-seam tin roof lay the mile-long oval track. Warren bred Thoroughbreds. That, too, like this property, had been in the family since the eighteenth century. The Randolphs loved blooded horses. The impressive walnut-paneled foyer at the manor house, hung with equine paintings spanning the centuries, attested to that fact.

The generous twelve-by-twelve-foot stalls were back to back in the center line of the barn. The tack room, wash stalls, and feed room were located in the center of the stall block. Circling the outside of the stalls was a large covered aisle that doubled as an exercise track during inclement weather. Since many windows circled the outside wall, enough light shone on the track so that even on a blizzardy day a rider could work a horse.

Kentucky possessed more of these glorified shed-row barns than Virginia, so Warren naturally prized his barn, built by his paternal grandfather. Colonel Randolph had put his money in the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway as well as the Union Pacific.

“What do you think?” His hazel eyes danced.

“Beautiful!” Harry exclaimed.

“What do you think?”
Mrs. Murphy asked Tucker.

Tucker tentatively put one paw on the Pavesafe rubber bricks. The dull reddish surface of interlocking bricks could expand and contract within itself, so no matter what the weather or temperature, the surface remained nonskid. The bricks were also specially treated to resist bacteria.

The tailless dog took a few gingery steps, then raced to the other curved end of the massive barn.
“Yahoo! This is like running on cushions.”

“Hey, hey, wait for me!”
The cat bolted after her companion.

“Your cat and dog approve.” Warren jammed his hands into his pockets like a proud father.

Harry knelt down and touched the surface. “This stuff is right out of paradise.”

“No, right out of Lexington, Kentucky.” He led her down the row of stalls. “Honey, they're so far ahead of us in Kentucky that it hurts my pride sometimes.”

“I guess we have to expect that. It is the center of the Thoroughbred industry.” Harry's toes tingled with the velvety feel underneath.

“Well, you know me, I think Virginia should lead the nation in every respect. We've provided more presidents than any other state. We provided the leadership to form this nation—”

Warren sang out the paean of Virginia's greatness, practicing perhaps for many speeches to follow. Harry, a native of the Old Dominion, didn't disagree, but she thought the other twelve colonies had assisted in the break from the mother country. Only New York approximated the original Virginia in size before the break from West Virginia, and it was natural that a territory that big would throw up something or someone important. Then, too, the perfect location of Virginia, in the center of the coastline, and its topography, created by three great rivers, formed an environment hospitable to agriculture and the civilizing arts. Good ports and the Chesapeake Bay completed the rich natural aspects of the state. Prideful as Harry felt, she thought bragging on it was a little shy of good manners or good sense. People not fortunate enough to have been born in Virginia nor wise enough to remove themselves to the Old Dominion hardly needed this dolorous truth pointed out to them. It made outsiders surly.

When Warren finished, Harry returned to the flooring. “Mind if I ask how much this stuff costs?”

“Eight dollars a square foot and nine fifty for the antistumble edge.”

Harry calculated, roughly, the square footage before her and arrived at the staggering sum of forty-five thousand dollars. She gulped. “Oh” squeaked out of her.

“That's what I said, but I tell you, Harry, I haven't any worries about big knees or injuries of any sort of this stuff. Before, I used cedar shavings. Well, what a whistling bitch to keep hauling shavings in with the dump truck, plus there's the man-hours to fetch it, replenish the supply in the aisle, rake it out, and clean it three times a day. I about wore out myself and my boys. And the dust when we had to work the horses inside—not good for the horses in their stalls or the ones being exercised, so then you spend time sprinkling it down. Still use the cedar for the stalls though. I grind it up a bit, mix it in with regular shavings. I like a sweet-smelling barn.”

“Most beautiful barn in Virginia.” Harry admired the place.

“Mouse alert!”
Mrs. Murphy screeched to a stop, fishtailed into the feed room, and pounced at a hole in the corner to which the offending rodent had repaired.

Tucker stuck her nose in the feed room.
“Where?”

“Here,”
called Mrs. Murphy from the corner.

Tucker crouched down, putting her head between her paws. She whispered,
“Should I stay motionless like you?”

“Nah, the little bugger knows we're here. He'll wait until we're gone. You know a mouse can eat a quart of grain a week? You'd think that Warren would have barn cats.”

“Probably does. They smelled you coming and took off.”
Tucker laughed as the tiger grumbled.
“Let's find Mom.”

“Not yet.”
Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw in the mouse hole and fished around. She withdrew a wad of fuzzy fabric, the result of eating a hole in a shirt hanging in the stable, no doubt.
“Ah, I feel something else.”

A piece of paper stuck to Mrs. Murphy's left forefinger claw as she slid it out of the hole.
“Damn, if I could just grab him.”

Tucker peered down at the high-quality vellum scrap.
“Goes through the garbage too.”

“So do you.”

“Not often.”
The dog sat down.
“Hey, there's a little bit of writing here.”

Mrs. Murphy withdrew her paw from her third attempt at the mouse hole.
“So there is. ‘Dearest darling.' Ugh. Love letters make me ill.”
The cat studied it again.
“Too chewed up. Looks like a man's writing, doesn't it?”

Tucker looked closely at the shred.
“Well, it's not very pretty. Guess there are lovers at the barn. Come on.”

“Okay.”

They joined Harry as she inspected a young mare Warren and his father had purchased at the January sale at Keeneland. Since this was an auction for Thoroughbreds of any age, unlike the sales specifically for yearlings or two-year-olds, one could sometimes find a bargain. The yearling auctions were the ones where the gavel fell and people's pockets suddenly became lighter than air.

“I'm trying to breed in staying power. She's got the bloodlines.” He thought for a moment, then continued. “Do you ever wonder, Harry, what it's like to be a person who has no blood? A person who shuffled through Ellis Island—one's ancestors, I mean. Would you ever feel that you belong, or would there be some vague romantic attachment, perhaps, to the old country? I mean, it must be dislocating to be a new American.”

“Ever attend the citizenship ceremony at Monticello? They do it every Fourth of July.”

“No, can't say that I have, but I'd better do it if I'm going to run for the state Senate.”

“I have. Standing out there on the lawn are Vietnamese, Poles, Ecuadorians, Nigerians, Scots, you name it. They raise their hands, and this is after they've demonstrated a knowledge of the Constitution, mind you, and they swear allegiance to this nation. I figure after that they're as American as we are.”

“You are a generous soul, Harry.” Warren slapped her on the back. “Here, I've got something for you.” He handed her a carton of the rubber paving bricks. It was heavy.

“Thank you, Warren, these will come in handy.” She was thrilled with the gift.

“Oh, here. What kind of a gentleman am I? Let me carry this to the truck.”

“We could carry it together,” Harry offered. “And, by the bye, I think you should run for the state Senate.”

Warren spied a wheelbarrow and placed the carton in it. “You do? Well, thank you.” He picked up the arms of the wheelbarrow. “Might as well use the wheel. Just think if the guy who invented it got royalties!”

“How do you know a woman didn't invent the wheel?”

“You got me there.” Warren enjoyed Harry. Unlike his wife, Ansley, Harry was relaxed. He couldn't imagine her wearing nail polish or fretting over clothes. He rather wished he weren't a married man when he was around Harry.

“Warren, why don't you let me come on out here and bush-hog a field or two? These bricks are so expensive, I feel guilty accepting them.”

“Hey, I'm not on food stamps. Besides, these are an overflow and I've got nowhere else to use them. You love your horses, so I bet you could use them in your wash rack . . . put them in the center and then put rubber mats like you have in the trailer around that. Not a bad compromise.”

“Great idea.”

Ansley pulled into the driveway, her bronzed Jaguar as sleek and as sexy as herself. Stuart and Breton were with her. She saw Harry and Warren pushing the wheelbarrow and drove over to them instead of heading for the house.

“Harry,” she called from inside the car, “how good to see you.”

“Your husband is playing Santa Claus.” Harry pointed to the carton.

“Hi, Harry,” the boys called out. Harry returned their greeting with a wave.

Ansley parked and elegantly disembarked from the Jag. Stuart and Breton ran up to the house. “You know Warren. He has to have a new project. But I must admit the barn looks fabulous and the stuff couldn't be safer. Now, you come on up to the house and have a drink. Big Daddy's up there, and he loves a pretty lady.”

“Thanks, I'd love to, but I'd better push on home.”

“Oh, I ran into Mim,” Ansley mentioned to her husband. “She now wants you on the Greater Crozet Committee.”

Warren winced. “Poppa just gave her a bushel of money for her Mulberry Row project—she's working over our family one by one.”

“She knows that, and she said to my face how ‘responsible' the Randolphs are. Now she wants your stores of wisdom. Exact words. She'll ask you for money another time.”

“Stores of wisdom.” The left side of Harry's mouth twitched in a suppressed giggle as she looked at Warren. At forty-one, he remained a handsome man.

Warren grunted as he lifted the heavy carton onto the tailgate. “Is it possible for a woman to have a Napoleon complex?”

18

The human mouth is a wonderful creation, except that it can rarely remain shut. The jaw, hinged on each side of the face, opens and closes in a rhythm that allows the tongue to waggle in a staggering variety of languages. Gossip fuels all of them. Who did what to whom. Who said what to whom. Who didn't say a word. Who has how much money and who spends it or doesn't. Who sleeps with whom. Those topics form the foundation of human discourse. Occasionally the human can discuss work, profit and loss, and what's for supper. Sometimes a question or two regarding the arts will pass although sports as a subject is a better bet. Rare moments bring forth a meditation on spirituality, philosophy, and the meaning of life. But the backbeat, the pulse, the percussion of exchange, was, is, and ever shall be gossip.

Today gossip reached a crescendo.

Mrs. Hogendobber picked up her paper the minute the paperboy left it in the cylindrical plastic container. That was at six
A
.
M
. She knew that Harry's fading red mailbox, nailed to an old fence post, sat half a mile from her house. She usually scooped out the paper on her way to work, so she wouldn't have read it yet.

Mrs. H. grabbed the black telephone that had served her well since 1954. The click, click, click as the rotary dial turned would allow a sharp-eared person to identify the number being called.

“Harry, Wesley Randolph died last night.”

“What? I thought Wesley was so much better.”

“Heart attack.” She sounded matter-of-fact. By this time she'd seen enough people leave this life to bear it with grace. One positive thing about Wesley's death was that he'd been fighting leukemia for years. At least he wouldn't die a lingering, painful death. “Someone from the farm must have given the information to the press the minute it happened.”

“I just saw Warren Sunday afternoon. Thanks for telling me. I'll have to pay my respects after work. See you in a little bit.”

Now, telling a friend of another friend's passing doesn't fall under the heading of gossip, but that day at work Harry sloshed around in it.

The first person to alert Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber to the real story was Lucinda Coles. Luckily Mim Sanburne was picking up her mail, so they could cross-fertilize, as it were.

“—everywhere.” Lucinda gulped a breath in the middle of her story about Ansley Randolph. “Warren, in a state of great distress, naturally, was finally reduced to calling merchants to see if by chance Ansley had stopped by on her rounds. Well, he couldn't find her. He called me and I said I didn't know where she was. Of course, I had no idea the poor man's father had dropped dead in the library.”

Mim laid a trump card on the table. “Yes, he called me too, and like you, Lulu, I hadn't a clue, but I had seen Ansley at about five that afternoon at Foods of All Nations. Buying a bottle of expensive red wine: Medoc, 1970, Château le Trelion. She seemed surprised to see me”—Mim paused—“almost as if I had caught her out . . . you know.”

“Uh-huh.” Lucinda nodded in the customary manner of a woman affirming whatever another woman has said. Of course, the other woman's comment usually has to do with emotions, which could never actually be qualified or quantified—that being the appeal of emotions. They both acknowledged a tyranny of correct feelings.

“She's running around on Warren.”

“Uh-huh.” Lucinda's voice grew in resonance, since she, as a victim of infidelity, was also an expert on its aftermath. “No good will come of it. No good ever does.”

After those two left, BoomBoom Craycroft dashed in for her mail. Her comment, after a lengthy discussion of the slight fracture of her tibia, was that everybody screws around on everybody, and so what?

The men approached the subject differently. Mr. Randolph's demise was characterized by Market as a response to his dwindling finances and the leukemia. It was hard for Harry to believe a man would have a heart attack because his estate had diminished, thanks to his own efforts, from $250 million to $100 million, but anything was possible. Perhaps he felt poor.

Fair Haristeen lingered over the counter, chatting. His idea was that a life of trying to control everybody and everything had ruined Wesley Randolph's health. Sad, of course, because Randolph was an engaging man. Mostly, Fair wanted Harry to pick which movie they would see Friday night.

Ned Tucker, Susan's husband, took the view that we die when we want to, therefore Père Randolph was ready to go and nobody should feel too bad about it.

By the end of the workday speculation had run the gamut. The last word on Wesley Randolph's passing, from Rob Collier as he picked up the afternoon mail, was that the old man was fooling around with his son's wife. The new medication Larry Johnson had prescribed for his illness had revved up his sex drive. Warren walked in on the tryst and his father died of a heart attack from the shock.

As Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber locked up, they reviewed the day's gossip. Mrs. Hogendobber dropped the key in her pocket, inhaled deeply, and said to Harry, “I wonder what they say about us?”

“Gossip lends to death a new terror.” Harry smirked.