November 16, 2016 Wednesday

Sitting at the kitchen table, overcast skies adding to the gloom, Fair faced Cooper. Susan was also there. Harry put her hand over her husband’s.

“Honey, don’t get so upset. Your blood pressure will shoot up.”

“Upset. A bullet’s dug out from the seat of your station wagon. Yes, I’m upset. Someone shot at you. They didn’t take a shot at Cooper, driving ahead of you. They waited for you. If it hadn’t been raining so hard, who knows?” He squeezed her hand.

Susan, who had come to take Harry for her six-month cancer checkup, arrived early because her best friend called her, informing her of last night’s event, accident, attempted what? Murder?

“Fair, I can’t snap my fingers to give you an answer. The bullet will be traced, if possible. We sent the team out first thing this morning and we’re fortunate it entered the side of the seat, the entry clearly visible.” Cooper wanted to soothe her beloved neighbor, a wonderful man.

“Dad’s really upset.” Tucker, under the table, cast her eyes upward.

“Just think. I could have been in the backseat.” Pewter’s green eyes widened.

“Pewter!” Mrs. Murphy bared her fangs for a moment.

“Well, I could have died,” the gray cat whined.

“And so could Harry.” Tucker was as worried as Fair.

“Why would someone shoot at the Volvo when Mom leaves her Virginia Wildlife meeting?” Mrs. Murphy, always thoughtful, moved closer to Harry’s leg as the human sat in the chair.

“Let’s review this again,” Cooper calmly ordered. “The meeting broke up due to the weather. Who left first? MaryJo, then I think it was Jessica Ligon.”

Susan nodded. “Jessica had the most distance to travel. Pretty much Jessica and MaryJo left together, followed closely by Liz. That’s what I remember.”

“Me, too,” Harry confirmed.

Cooper, writing this down in her reporter’s notebook, exhaled through her nose. “All right. I will call them to see if each recalls who drove out first. Did they see another car at the end of the driveway, on the dirt road leading out to the paved road? It’s possible their headlights caught sight of another car.”

“How anyone could see anything, I don’t know.” Harry remembered the wind and terrible, instant downpour.

“Still, it’s possible a glint of headlight off chrome. Now, look, I don’t want you two,” Cooper pointed at Harry and Susan with her mechanical pencil, “calling them. That’s my job. And since no one was hurt, let’s keep this away from the papers.”

“What do I tell my insurance agent?” Harry’s agent, Marsha Moran at Hanckle Citizens, would need information, plus once Harry started talking to Marsha, she couldn’t stop. The woman always made her laugh.

“Can you wait a day? I should know my insurance rules better. But if not, I will also call Hanckle Citizens. It won’t take us long to trace the bullet if it can be traced, thanks to the computer. Even ten years ago this would have dragged on. One good thing is arms manufacturers respond almost instantly to law enforcement requests. Obviously, the real problem is secondhand gun dealers.”

“Then what?” Fair frowned.

“We take it a step at a time. If the bullet can’t be traced to a registered gun, we contact dealers. Many are helpful. The ones that aren’t are almost always selling stolen merchandise. We have to prove it. Don’t get me going on this. It’s a problem across the nation, but as I said, many dealers and also manufacturers are responsible and easy to work with.” She looked into his eyes. “Fair, of course you’re worried but you know Sheriff Shaw and I will be on it.”

Susan reached down to pet Tucker, who came out from under the table. “Coop, there’s no way this can be an accident.”

A long pause followed, then the deputy spoke. “It does seem unlikely.”

Harry raised her voice. “I haven’t meddled in anything. I haven’t asked a bunch of questions about the private eye, really. I’ve not interfered. I’ve been good.”

Cooper smiled. “For you, yes.”

“Honey,” Harry said to her husband, “go on to work. Susan’s driving me to the doctor for my checkup. Cooper will be tracing the bullet. I’ll be fine.”

—

Later, Harry and Susan stopped at the club for lunch. Susan had waited while Harry endured the boob squisher, had her blood drawn, the usual. The oncologist’s office was in the same building as Dr. Beverly Ely, Pierre Rice’s dear friend.

The mammogram came out clear, nothing to worry about. The blood test results would take a day. For whatever reason, the day proved busy at the doctor’s office.

Harry, attacking a Cobb salad, felt relief. So did Susan.

“Good?” Susan pointed to the salad as she lifted her enormous Reuben.

“It’s worth driving across town to Keswick Club for the Cobb salad. I keep forgetting to ask you, how do you like the new Pete Dye course?”

“It makes you think, which I like. I’ve only played it once and that was with Cindy Chandler so we buzzed around in the golf cart, but next time I’ll use you for my caddy. You can see for yourself.”

“Mmm.” Harry bit into the egg on her salad. “People say Pete Dye courses are unforgiving.”

Susan put down her sandwich, wiped her fingers on her linen napkin. “This isn’t an easy course, but I don’t think it’s punishing.”

“You’re the champion at Farmington. Of course, you wouldn’t think it’s punishing.” Harry smiled at her friend.

“That’s good of you to say, especially since you bitch and moan at me when you caddy for me.”

“Someone has to do it.” Harry laughed, as did Susan.

“Like I said, you have to think. If you’re a strong player and you take the more difficult shot and you make it, great. If you’re foolhardy and overestimate what you can do, this course can cost you but any course can. I often think one of the keys to playing golf is not just your strokes but the ability to read terrain. Funny, but that’s where our foxhunting pays off. You pay attention to swales, reverse ridges, soil. And that reminds me, we haven’t gone out much this season. Hope the weather improves so we can.”

“Me, too.”

Both hunted. Of course, no foxes were killed. Americans don’t hunt to kill, which isn’t to say sometimes a fox zigs when he should have zagged. Every now and then one does run a dumb fox, but in the main, they are frighteningly intelligent.

Neither women discussed Harry’s results. They were happy when the mammogram was good. Harry was almost at the five-year mark since her breast cancer surgery. Relief was palpable. When Harry awoke from her surgery back then, her husband and her best friend waited in the room. She opened her eyes to the two faces she loved most in life except for those on four feet.

Harry always accompanied Susan for her mammograms, as well. One could go alone but it was one of those procedures where a friend lightened the load. Should the nurse return and say you needed a second mammogram, your friend was there with you. A second was rarely good news.

They listened to the fire in the fireplace, nodded to the other people in the grille, looked out on the course, wrapped in November gray.

“Susan.” Harry’s voice carried a tone of seriousness.

“What?”

“What could we be doing at Virginians for Sustainable Wildlife that would threaten someone?”

“I don’t know. Ned’s efforts for Save the Old Schools, seems to me, would provoke some negative response. But since Tazio, all of us have been working on that, there hasn’t been much pushback. I mean there’s always the possible nutcase.”

“Well, Pierre Rice’s Tahoe was found in the shed.”

Susan shook her head. “That whole thing, the murder, the car showing up later, the chit around his neck, the cage, it’s like a dense fog. I can’t see anything.”

“So, you believe that shot was meant for me.”

Susan replied, “Well—yes.”

“Here’s the thing. If it was meant to warn me, warn me of what?”

“That’s just it, isn’t it?”

“And here’s the other thing. If someone wasn’t waiting for the meeting to break up, waiting in the dark which turned into a nasty storm, then whoever fired that shot was at the meeting.”

A very long pause followed this. “That has occurred to me.”