Claws And Effect Part 7

"Reading bores me," Pewter honestly answered. "Does it bore you, Tucker?"

"No."

"Tucker, you can hardly read."

"Oh yes I can." The corgi glared at Murphy. "I'm not an Afghan hound, you know, obsessed with my appearance. I've learned a few things in this life. But I don't get what a murdered priest has to do with lovers. Isn't Valentine's Day about lovers?"

With a superior air, Murphy lifted the tip of her tail, delicately grooming it, and replied, "The old belief was that birds pair off on February fourteenth and I guess since that was the day Valentine was murdered somehow that pairing became a.s.sociated with him."

"I'm sorry I'm late." Miranda bustled through the back door. "I overslept."

Harry, up to her elbows in mail, smiled. "You hardly ever do that."

They had spoken Sunday about the murder of Hank Brevard and, with that shorthand peculiar to people who have known one another a long time or lived through intense experiences together, they hopped right in.

"Accident?" Miranda placed packages on the shelves, each of which had numbers and letters on them so large parcels could be easily retrieved.

"Impossible."

"I guess I'm trying to find something-" A rap on the back door broke her train of thought.

"Who is it?" Harry called out.

"Miss Wonderful."

"Susan." Harry laughed as her best friend opened the door. "Help us out and make tea, will you? Rob showed up early and I haven't started a pot. What are you doing here this early, anyway?"

Susan washed out the teapot at the small sink in the rear. "Brooks' Volvo is in the shop so I dropped her at school. Danny's off on a field trip so I had to do it." Dan, her son, would be leaving for college this fall. "I swear that Volvo Ned bought her must be the prototype. What a tank but it's safe."

"What's the matter with it?" Miranda asked.

"I think the alternator died." She put tea bags in three cups, then came over to help sort mail until the water boiled. "You'd think most people would have mailed out their Valentine's cards before today."

"They did, but today"-Harry surveyed the volume of mail-"is just wild. There aren't even that many bills in here. The bills roll in here next week."

The teakettle whistled. "Okay, girls, how do you want your tea?"

"The usual," both called out, which meant Harry wanted hers black and Miranda wanted a teaspoon of honey and a drop of cream.

Susan brought them their cups and she drank one, too.

"Murphy, what are you looking at?"

"This Jiffy bag smells funny." She pushed it.

Pewter and Tucker joined her.

"Yeah." Pewter inhaled deeply. "Addressed to Dr. Bruce Buxton."

Puzzled, Tucker c.o.c.ked her head to the right and then to the left. "Dried blood. Faint but it smells like dried blood."

The cats looked at one another and then back to Tucker, whose nose was unimpeachable.

"All right, you guys. No messing with government property." Harry s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag, read the recipient's name, then placed it on the bookshelves, because it was too large for his bra.s.s mailbox. "Ned tell you anything?" she asked Susan.

"No. Client relationship."

Susan's husband, a trusted and good lawyer, carried many a secret. Tempted though he was at times, he never betrayed a client's thoughts or deeds to his wife.

"Is Bobby Minifee under suspicion?" Miranda put her teacup on the divider between the public s.p.a.ce and the work s.p.a.ce.

"No. Not really," Susan replied.

"Anyone seen Coop?" Harry shot a load of mail into her ex-husband's mailbox.

"No. Working overtime with all this." Susan looked on the back of a white envelope. "Why would anyone send a letter without a return address, the mail being what it is. No offense to you, Harry, or you, Miranda."

"None taken." Harry folded one sack, now emptied. "Maybe they get busy and forget."

At eight on the dot, Marilyn Sanburne stood at the front door just as Miranda unlocked it.

"Good morning. Oh, Miranda, where did you get that sweater? The cranberry color compliments your complexion."

"Knitted it myself." The older woman smiled. "We've got so much mail-well, there's some mail in your box but you'd better check back this afternoon, too."

"Fine." Little Mim pulled out her bra.s.s mailbox key, opened the box, pulling out lots of mail. She quickly flipped through it, then loudly exclaimed, "A letter from Blair."

"Great." Harry spoke quickly because Little Mim feared Harry had designs on the handsome model herself, which she did not.

"I also wanted you ladies to be the first to know that I've rented the old brick pharmacy building and it's going to be my campaign headquarters."

"That's a lot of s.p.a.ce," Harry blurted out.

"Yes." Little Mim smiled and bid them good-bye.

They watched as she got into her car and opened Blair's letter. She was so intent upon reading it that she didn't notice her mother pull up next to her.

Mim parked, emerged well-dressed as always, and walked over to the driver's side of her daughter's car. Little Mim didn't see her mother, so Big Mim rapped on the window with her forefinger.

Startled, Little Mim rolled down the window. "Mother."

"Daughter."

A silence followed. Little Mim had no desire to share her letter, and she wasn't thrilled that her mother saw how engrossed she was in it.

Shrewdly, she jumped onto a subject. "Mother, I've rented the pharmacy."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"Zeb Berryhill called your father and wondered if he would be upset and your father said he would not. In fact, he was rather looking forward to a challenge. So that was that."

"Oh." Little Mim, vaguely disappointed, slipped the letter inside her coat. She was hoping to be the talk of the town.

"It must be good."

"Mother, I have to have some secrets."

"Why? n.o.body else in this town does," said the woman who had secrets going back decades.

"Oh, everyone has secrets. Like the person who killed Hank Brevard."

"M-m-m, there is that. Well, I'm off to a Piedmont Environmental Council meeting. Happy Valentine's Day."

"You, too, Mumsy." Little Mim smiled entirely too much.

As she drove off, Big Mim entered the post office just as Dr. Buxton pulled into the parking s.p.a.ce vacated by her daughter. At that moment her irritation with her daughter took over the more pressing gossip of the day.

"Girls," Mim addressed them, "I suppose you've heard of Marilyn's crackbrained plan to oppose her father."

"Yes," came the reply.

"Not so crackbrained," Pewter sa.s.sed.

Bruce walked in behind her, nodded h.e.l.lo to everyone, opened his box, and almost made it out the door before Miranda remembered his package. "Dr. Buxton, wait a minute. I've got a Jiffy bag for you."

"Thanks." He joined Mim at the divider.

She placed her elbows on the divider. "Bruce, what's going on at the hospital? The whole episode is shocking."

"I don't know. He wasn't the most pleasant guy in the world but I don't think that leads to murder. If it did a lot more of us would be dead." He looked Big Mim right in the eye.

"Was that your attempt at being subtle?" She bridled when people didn't properly defer to her.

"No. I'm not subtle. I'm from Missouri, remember?"

"Two points." Murphy jumped onto the divider, Pewter followed.

"Let me out," Tucker asked Harry, because she wanted to be right out there with Bruce and Mim.

"Crybaby." Harry opened the swinging door and the corgi padded out to the public section.

"You and Truman." Mim rapped the countertop with her long fingernails.

"Here we go." Miranda slid the bag across the counter.

"Ah." He squeezed the bag, examined the return address, which was his office at the hospital. "Huh," he said to himself but out loud. He flicked up the flat red tab with his fingernail, pulling it to open the top. He shook the bag and a large b.l.o.o.d.y scalpel fell out. "What the h.e.l.l!"

11.

Coop placed the scalpel in a plastic bag. Rick turned his attention to Dr. Bruce Buxton, not in a good mood.

"Any ideas?"

"No." Bruce's lower jaw jutted out as he answered the sheriff.

"Oh, come on now, Doc. You've got enemies. We've all got enemies. Someone's pointing the finger at you and saying, 'He's the killer and here's the evidence.'"

Bruce, a good four inches taller than Rick, squared his shoulders. "I told you, I don't know anyone who would do something like this and no, I didn't kill Hank Brevard."

"Wonder how many patients he's lost on the table?" Pewter, ever the cynic, said.

"He probably lost more due to bedside manner than incompetence," Mrs. Murphy shrewdly noted.

"He's not scared. I can smell fear and he's not giving off the scent." Tucker sniffed at Bruce's pants leg.

"You don't have to stop. You can still sort the mail. But first tell me where you saw the bag," the sheriff asked Harry, Miranda, and Susan, now stuck because she had dropped in to help. He had interviewed Mim first so that she could leave.

"I saw it first," Tucker announced.

"You did not. I did," Pewter contradicted the bright-eyed dog.

"They don't care. If you gave these humans a week they wouldn't understand that we first noticed something peculiar." Murphy flopped on her side on the shelf between the upper and lower bra.s.s mailboxes.

"I saw the bag." Harry, feeling a chill, rolled up her turtleneck, which she had folded down originally. "Actually, Mrs. Murphy sniffed it out. Because she noticed it, I noticed it."

"What a surprise." Mrs. Murphy's long silken eyebrows twitched upward.

"Look, Sheriff, I've got to be at the hospital scrubbed up in an hour." Bruce impatiently shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"When will you be finished?" Rick ignored Bruce's air of superiority.

"Barring complications, about four."

"I'll see you at your office at four then."

"There's no need to make this public, is there?" Bruce's voice, oddly light for such a tall man, rose.

"No."

"No need to tell Sam Mahanes unless it turns out to be the murder weapon and it won't."