14

Each day contains twenty-four hours, except Monday, the longest day of the week. It contains thirty. That’s how Harry felt when she opened the back door, dropped her gear bag on the bench outside the kitchen door, and walked inside.

The phone rang just as she closed the door behind her.

“Hello.”

“Honey, I won’t get home until late,” Fair apologized. “I’m behind on the billing.”

“How about if I leave a casserole in the oven? You can heat it up when you get home.”

“Thanks, but I’ll order something.”

“Crozet Pizza,” she teased him.

“I love Crozet Pizza.” The little pizza joint was his favorite.

“You know how you’re always at me to streamline, become more efficient? Why don’t you hire a true office manager? Someone who can bill, answer the phones, and code.”

A veterinarian’s files, like a physician’s, have colored stripes called codes on their edges.

The process is so complicated that people take courses to understand it. If the bill doesn’t go out on time, the vet doesn’t get paid. If insurance companies are involved—and increasingly they were for horses—the cycle slowed even more.

“I can’t make up my mind. It’s not just the salary, it’s the payroll taxes, their insurance. Remember, I’m a small business, and there aren’t insurance packages that won’t blast the budget. We get by with workers’ compensation, another government cook-up. By the time I’m done paying out, that’s fifty or sixty thousand a year.”

“Be so much better if you could just hand the money to your employee.”

“What? Just think what would happen to all those sticky fingers along the way. No money would be on them. The whole thing is a giant con, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why people just go along.”

“Me, neither.” Harry’s impulse was to fight.

It seemed to Harry that most other people’s impulse was to allow themselves to be used, robbed, herded, so long as they could buy what they wanted. They told themselves, “You can’t fight city hall.” Funny, Harry thought, our ancestors did.

“How’d today go?”

“Poplar Forest—you won’t believe how much they’ve done. We stayed outside. I can’t wait to get inside, but the foundations for the old outside offices are uncovered. It’s just amazing.”

“I’ll soon see. How about Will’s murderer getting caught? That’s a blessing.”

“Sure is.” She paused. “But I’m suspicious. I don’t think it’s the whole story.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t, but, Harry, stay out of it,” Fair warned. “Let me go back to the salt mines. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

After hanging up the phone, Harry fed the kids. The Fancy Feast smelled so good that she realized she was hungry.

“I hope you know, your food costs as much as mine.” She washed out the two tiny tins of cat food.

“We’re worth it,” Pewter replied saucily.

Harry then opened a small can of dog food, which she mixed into kibble for Tucker. Tucker could put on weight quickly, so she monitored the corgi’s diet.

“Here you go, Wonderdog.”

“Thank you.”

Harry checked the time on the old railroad wall clock. Six-thirty. She walked outside; the sun was setting behind the mountains. Whatever time was listed for sunset in the papers, it was earlier on her farm because of the mountains. Once the equinox approached, a chill seemed to descend upon the earth along with the sun. Along lower ridges, long golden slanting rays still pierced through. No one day looked like any other, and that pleased her.

She walked back inside and dialed Cooper. “You on your way home?”

“Yep.”

“I made a tuna casserole and need help eating it.”

“Glad to be of service.” Cooper laughed.

Figuring she had about twenty-five minutes before the deputy showed up, Harry popped the casserole in the oven on low. She’d made it last night. Although not much for cooking, occasionally she could be roused to culinary labors—simple labors, nothing fancy.

She used the time to check the mares and foals, now six and seven months old. Time to wean. The hunters greeted her. She brought them in the barn in the mornings to eat a bit of grain and to have some alone time, then back out in the pastures they’d go. In winter’s bitter cold she’d usually bring them in at sunset, turning them out again in the morning. But the late-September nights, though carrying a chill, would stay in the high forties, low fifties. Pleasant enough, especially for horses, as these were their optimum temperatures, in contrast to those of humans.

No sooner had she come back in and set the table than Tucker announced Cooper’s arrival.

“I hate Mondays.” Cooper, in uniform, strode through the door.

“What would you like to drink?”

“A beer.”

With Fair back in the house, there was always good beer in the refrigerator. He limited himself to one a day, but he really wanted that one.

Out came the beer, the beer glass placed before Cooper. Harry, hotpads to the ready, pulled out the casserole, the aroma filling the kitchen.

“Do you want a salad?”

“Let’s eat the casserole. If I have room left, I’ll make it myself.” Cooper was delighted to have supper with her neighbor and friend. “Where’s Fair?”

“At the office doing the billing.”

“He needs help.”

“You tell him.” Harry put the casserole on a trivet, a large spoon alongside it, and sat down herself. “Dig in.”

Cooper did just that when Harry filled her plate. They ate in silence for a few minutes.

“Can you believe they’re not running their mouths?” Pewter thought it amusing.

“They will,” Tucker predicted.

Halfway through her first helping, Cooper started the conversation. “What a day. If I have to talk to one more person, I will just blow up.”

“Person or media?”

“Both. Reporters are already digging up reasons why Jonathan Bechtal is a killer.”

Cooper’s worldview was black and white. If you as an individual broke the law, you went to the slammer. Her job was to find you and arrest you. The rest was up to judge and jury, and usually her work was undone in the courtroom. You do wrong, wham. That was Cooper’s attitude. Gender, race, a bad mother had nothing to do with it. Thousands upon thousands of people endured similar circumstances and they didn’t rob, maim, or kill. But someone would make out Bechtal to be a victim.

Harry, on the other hand, did think about mitigating factors.

Coop fired up again. “And this creep, Bechtal—full beard like an Old Testament prophet—is screaming about how God talks to him. How he is an instrument of the Lord. Damn!”

“Well, honeybun, it must have been quite a day.”

“It was. This was one of the most irritating days of my whole life. I’m glad the perp turned himself in, but I don’t want to listen to him. The media is making a celebrity out of him.”

“Take another drink.” Harry, not usually one to push alcohol, thought this a wise course tonight.

Calming a little, Cooper leaned back in the chair. “This is really good. If you don’t watch it, you can get fat as a tick being a cop.” She laughed. “I go to the gym three times a week, and now that I have that place to take care of, I work outside a lot. That helps. Helps to just be away from people.”

“Decompression.”

She ate some more hot food. “I feel better.” She sighed. “I need a wife.”

“Doesn’t every woman?” Harry smiled. “Although I give Fair credit: he really does his share, and he’s a good cook. He’s better than I am, but, of course, he has to cook on the grill. I think this passion for the grill occurs when they start to shave.”

“Does taste good, though, and the different wood adds flavor.”

“Have you seen my husband’s different wood piles? He puts them in small garbage cans—clean, I mean. He has mesquite, charred oak, regular charcoal, even dried sassafras roots. He has special sauces. He won’t give the recipe. That’d be like asking for the Coca-Cola formula.”

Coop returned to the topic of the killer after listening to Harry.

“Once you weed out the philosophy, the justification, the sheer insanity of Bechtal, you’re left with details, most of which correspond to the shooting.”

“Most?” Harry’s interest spiked.

“He puts the elevator bay on the west side of the lobby. It’s on the east.”

“Is that so important?”

“Harry, I don’t know, but I’m,” she paused, “unconvinced.”

“That he’s the killer?”

Mrs. Murphy’s ears pricked up. She walked over to the table. Pewter, face in food bowl, figured she’d get the information later from Mrs. Murphy, in case she missed anything while chewing lustily.

“When Rick and I first arrived on the scene, we secured the area, investigated the body. Fortunately, backup came in less than five minutes. We walked over to the other building, because you could see immediately from his wound that he wasn’t shot face-to-face. We went inside. He couldn’t have been shot from an office window, because people were there. Nor could the killer have taken the elevator. We went to the roof. That’s where he had to have been, and forensics will confirm it. Oh, he confessed to using a silencer, too. When we came down the stairwell, there was a crushed Virginia Slims butt on the floor. I bagged it. Neither Rick nor I thought it came from our killer. Men don’t usually smoke Virginia Slims, not butch enough.” She smiled. “But maybe he did. A nicotine fit is a nicotine fit.”

“What’d Rick make of it?”

“Nothing.” She smiled again. “He owes me five dollars, though. I bet the killer was a man. Always is in a case like this. He said he’d be wild and bet it was a woman.”

“People are supposed to go outside to smoke, but,” Harry shrugged, “probably someone in that building who wanted to stay in the air-conditioning.”

“Could be.”

“Have you mentioned the elevator-bay location to Rick?”

“No. I will, but he’s distracted. All the chaos, plus he’s working up a budget request for the county commissioners. It’s always a fight. There are a couple of people on the commission who question him as though he were the enemy, not a public servant trying to protect life and property.”

“Don’t you think Bechtal’s surrender might put them in a better mood?”

“We can hope.” She paused. “I’ll bring this up to Rick in a couple of days.”

“Want to hear about my day?” Harry smiled.

“I’m sorry.” Cooper drained her beer.

“Want another?”

“No. But if you have green tea, I’ll take a cup.”

“Do. Fair’s buying green tea, white tea, orange tea, and Sleepytime tea to drink at night. He reads everything about this stuff. I try it and if it works, fine. If not, I learned my lesson.”

She rose, put the kettle on, and sat back down. “Not much for dessert, but I have cookies.”

“No. I made a pig of myself.” Cooper patted her stomach. “I am sorry. Tell me about your day.”

Harry related the events, laughing about Carla’s harassing Tazio.

“She is a piece of work.”

“Tazio swears she’ll kill her.” Harry’s peals of laughter filled the kitchen.

“Well, if she does, I’m off duty and in my ball gown. Someone else can take care of it.”

They both laughed.