Wish You Were Here (18 page)

33

Mrs. Murphy, ear cocked to catch mouse sounds, prowled in the barn. It had been a long day at the post office. When they arrived home Mrs. Murphy hurried toward the barn, accompanied by Tucker. High in the hayloft she caught sight of a black tail hanging over the side of a bale. She climbed up the ladder to the loft.
“Paddy?”

He opened one golden eye.
“You gorgeous thing. I've been waiting for you. It's a good thing you woke me up or I would have slept right through until tonight.”
He stretched.
“I remembered our brief conversation under a full moon and a canopy of stars. . . .”

She twitched her tail. His flowery speech made her impatient. He continued.

“And spurned though I was, your words were engraved on my heart. I saw something odd. I didn't think about it at the time and I wish I had, because I would have investigated, but my blood was up and you know how that is.”

“What?”
Mrs. Murphy's ears pitched forward; her whiskers swept forward. Every muscle was on alert.

“I was hunting out near the old Greenwood tunnel. A rabbit shot out of the tunnel and I chased him clear down to the Purcell McCue estate. That damned golden retriever of theirs lumbered out, mouth running, and I lost my rabbit.”

“Go up a tree?”

“Me? That toothless old hound. No, I dashed right in front of his nose and walked on home. Then I remembered what you said and I came here.”

“The tunnel's sealed.”

“But I saw the rabbit come out of it.”

“Do you remember exactly where?”

“He moved pretty fast but I think it was near the bottom. It's covered with foliage. Hard to see.”

“How do you know he wasn't hiding in the foliage and you flushed him out?”

“I don't, but I swear I saw him pop out of a hole at the very bottom. Can't be sure but, well—I thought you'd like to know.”

“Thanks, Paddy. I don't know how I can make it up to you.”

“I do.”

“Not that way.”
Mrs. Murphy cuffed his ears.
“Come on, let's tell Tucker.”

The two cats joined Tucker. Conversation grew excited.

“We've got to get up there!”
Tucker shouted above the voices.
“That's the only way we'll ever know.”

“I know we've got to get up there but it's a good day's journey, and we can't leave Harry now that she's in danger.”
Mrs. Murphy spat, she was so vehement.

“How are you going to convince her to go up there in the first place?”
The human race didn't rank high in Paddy's book.

“Harry catches on if you keep after her.”
Tucker defended her friend.

“If we can just think of something—”

“More dead birds and moles?”

“No.”
Mrs. Murphy jumped on the water trough.
“The Xeroxed papers. Let's try that when we get inside.”

“Oh.”
Tucker's liquid brown eyes clouded.
“That will fry her.”

“Better mad than dead,”
Paddy said matter-of-factly.

34

“I'd better learn to quack, since I'm going to waddle for the next three days.” Officer Cynthia Cooper rubbed her stomach as she entered Harry's house.

“Mim spends a fortune on her cook, and Susan Tucker's much better—for free, too.” Harry dumped her satchel on the kitchen table, since they had come in through the back door. The last time Harry used the front door was for her father's funeral party. “Let me show you the guest bedroom.”

“No, I'll sleep in your room and you sleep in the guest bedroom. If anyone sneaks around looking for you, he or she will come to your bedroom first.”

“You don't really believe the killer is going to sneak around up here in the middle of the night just because he or she knows I've figured out the postcard signal?” Harry wanted to think she was safe.

“It seems unlikely, but then everything about this crime is unlikely.”

“Follow me!”
Mrs. Murphy shouted over her shoulder. She galloped into Harry's bedroom, knocked over a lamp, and threw the Xeroxed papers on the hooked rug.

“Yahoo!”
Tucker pretended to chase Mrs. Murphy.
“Should I chew the papers?”

“No, nitwit. Circle the bed,”
Mrs. Murphy ordered the dog.
“When she gets here to spank us, hide under the bed with me.”

Harry, followed by Officer Cooper, charged into the room. “All right, you two!”

Mrs. Murphy hopped on the bed, performed a perfect somersault, and then as Harry reached for her she scooted off and flattened herself under the bed. Tucker was already there.

The muslin material underneath the mattress hung invitingly. From time to time Mrs. Murphy would lie on her back and pull herself, paw over paw, from one end of the bed to the other. Shreds of material gave testimony to her lateral rappeling technique. She reached up and sank in her claws.

“Don't,”
Tucker warned.
“She's furious enough as it is.”

“That's enough, you two! I mean it. I really mean it this time. Damn, the lamp is broken.”

“Was it valuable?” Officer Cooper knelt down to pick up the pieces. She could see a doggie, ears down, staring at her. “That dog is laughing at me, I swear it.”

“A real comedienne.” Harry hunkered down too. “Mrs. Murphy, what have you done to my bed?”

“If you'd clean under here more often you'd have noticed by now,”
Mrs. Murphy answered.

“The lamp not only wasn't valuable, it was the ugliest lamp in three counties. I never got around to buying a good one. Actually, I barely have time to brush my teeth and eat.”

“H-m-m,” said Cooper.

“Oh, jeeze,”
Mrs. Murphy moaned.
“Here comes the lament of Father Time, gray hair and slowed reflexes. I wish she'd get over it! Dammit, Harry, the papers!”

“Don't yowl at me, pussycat. I can sit on this bed and wait a long time for you to come out,” Harry threatened while still on her knees. “Might as well clean up this mess.” She began picking up the papers.

Officer Cooper read one as she helped. “Where'd you find these?”

“You know perfectly well, or doesn't Rick Shaw tell you anything?”

“Oh, this and the ledger is what you filched from Maude's desk? That got his knickers in a twist.” She giggled.

“Yeah.” Harry put the papers on the bed. “Mrs. Hogendobber and I only copied them. It's not as if we obstructed justice.”

“Our sheriff wants to know everything. He's a good sheriff.” She began reading again.

“Which one is that?” Harry's knees cracked when she unbent to sit on the bed.

“November 4, 1851. Addressed to the President and Directors, Board of Public Works, from the Engineer's Office of the Blue Ridge Railroad.”

“Too bad he couldn't start with ‘Dear Honey'—think of the stationery it would have saved him,” Harry remarked. “I think that letter is about the temporary bridge built at Waynesboro so the men could haul materials over the mountains.”

“Yeah, that's the one. Wow. I can't believe this. The original price of labor when the tunnel was contracted was seventy-five cents per day, and it shot up to eighty-seven and a half cents for some workers and even one dollar for others. Men risked their lives for eighty-seven and a half cents!”

“A different world.” Harry handed Officer Cooper another sheet, the overhead light casting a dim shadow on the policewoman's blond hair. “This one's interesting.” She started to read.

“November 8, 1853. He wrote a lot in November, didn't he?” She read on. “‘. . . we were suddenly taken by surprise by the eruption of a large vein of water, for which we were obliged to take hands from their work, and set them to pumping, until we could obtain machinery for the same purpose, working by horsepower. This circumstance has been repeated several times during the year, successive veins of water having been encountered, until the body of water we have now to keep down amounts to no less than one and a half hogshead per minute, ninety hogshead per hour.' ” She whistled. “They could have drowned in there.”

“Digging tunnels is dangerous work and this is before dynamite, remember. He created a siphon to evacuate the water and it was the longest siphon on record. Here's another one.”

Mrs. Murphy grumbled under the bed.
“I don't feel like sleeping under the bed. Are they ever going to get it or not?”

“Beats me.”
Tucker yawned.

“H-m-m.” Cooper squinted at the page. “December 9, 1855. Lot of technical stuff about the grades and curves and timbering the excavation.” She selected a more dramatic passage. “. . . some time in February, 1854, an immense slide from the mountain completely blocked up the western entrance, and, coming down as fast as removed, from a height of about one hundred feet, effectually prevented the construction of the arch at this end, until late in the fall of the same year.' ” She turned to Harry. “How old was Claudius Crozet at this time?”

“He was born December 31, 1789, so he would have been just shy of his sixty-sixth birthday.”

“Enduring this kind of physical labor? He must have been tough as nails.”

“He was. He was a genius really. Politics cost him his job as First Engineer of the state, and twelve engineers couldn't do the work of one Crozet, so Richmond had to eat humble pie and ask him back in 1831. This was long before he built the tunnels. Know what else he did?”

“Not a clue.”

“Brought the first blackboard to West Point. He taught there starting in 1816. Can you imagine teaching without a blackboard? America must have been primitive. The level of education was so low at West Point that he had to teach his class math before he could teach them engineering. It's a wonder we didn't lose the Mexican War.”

“Guess he raised the standard of education. Lee was an engineer, you know.”

“I know. Every good Southern kid knows that—that and Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. And that ‘you all' is plural, never singular, and that corn bread—How'd I get on this?”

“You're wound up. All that sugar in Susan's sauce on the veal.”

“Maybe so. This is my favorite.” Harry plucked a letter from the disorganized pile. “Crozet was being criticized in the newspapers both for the length of time the tunnels were taking and for their location, so he wrote to a friend: ‘Strange things are now going on, of which you may have seen some notice. Most scurrilous and unfair attacks directed against me have appeared in some papers, especially the “Valley Star.” Though few will notice such things, except with disgust, yet it is proper I should be informed of them, otherwise the seeds of slander may grow around me, without my having a chance to cut them off in time.' He then asks his friend to send him clippings he might come across. He gave as his address ‘Brooksville, Albemarle.' ” She kicked off her shoes and put down the letter. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Try to do something new, something progressive, and you're crucified. I don't blame him for being touchy.”

“Do you think there's treasure in one of the tunnels?”

“Oh—I'd like to think there is.” Harry curled her toes.

“Car! Car! Car!”
Tucker warned and ran from under the bed to the front door.

“Cut the lights,” Officer Cooper commanded. “Get on the floor!”

Harry hit the floor so hard she knocked the wind out of herself and found herself nose to nose with Mrs. Murphy, who had started to wiggle out from under the bed.

Officer Cooper, pistol in hand, crept toward the front door. She waited. Whoever was in the car wasn't getting out, although the headlights had been turned off. The living room light gave evidence that someone was home and Tucker was hollering her head off.

“Shut up.”
Mrs. Murphy bumped the dog.
“We know there's a car outside. Cover the back door. I'll take the front.”

Tucker did as she was told. Officer Cooper flattened herself beside the front door.

The car door slammed. Footsteps clicked up to the front door. For a long agonizing moment nothing happened. Then a soft knock.

A harder knock, followed with “Harry, you in there?”

“Yes,” Harry called out from the bedroom. “It's BoomBoom Craycroft,” Harry told Officer Cooper.

“Stay on the floor!” Cooper yelled.

“Harry, what's wrong?” BoomBoom heard Cynthia Cooper's voice and didn't recognize it.

“Stay where you are. Put your hands behind your head.” Officer Cooper flicked on the front porch light to behold a bewildered BoomBoom, hands clasped behind her head.

“I'm not armed,” BoomBoom said. “But there's a thirty-eight in the glove compartment. It's registered.”

Mrs. Murphy slunk behind Officer Cooper's heels. If anything went wrong she would climb up a leg—in BoomBoom's case a bare one—and dig as deeply as she could.

Officer Cooper slowly opened the door. “Stay right where you are.” She frisked BoomBoom.

Harry, on all fours, peeked around the bedroom door. Sheepishly she stood up.

BoomBoom caught a glimpse of her. “Harry, are you all right?”

“I'm fine. What are you doing here?”

“Can I come inside?” BoomBoom's eyes implored Officer Cooper.

“Keep your hands behind your head and the answer is yes.”

As BoomBoom entered the house, Cooper shut the door behind her, gun still cocked. BoomBoom had plenty she wanted to say to Harry but the presence of Officer Cooper inhibited her.

“Harry, I've ransacked Kelly's office. Ever since you dropped by I've just gone wild and—I found something.”