Coop, sensitive to inflections and nuance, heard the suppressed anger when Bruce mentioned Sam Mahanes.

"Why are you so sure that isn't the murder weapon?" she asked.

"Because I didn't kill him."

"The scalpel could still be the murder weapon," she persisted.

"I heard that Hank was almost decapitated. You'd need a broad, long, sharp blade for that work. Which reminds me, the story was on all the news channels and in the paper. The hospital will be overrun with reporters. Are you sure you want to see me in my office?"

Rick replied, "Yes."

What Rick didn't say was that he wanted hospital staff to know he was calling upon Dr. Buxton. While there he would question other workers.

He couldn't be certain that the killer worked in the hospital. What he could be certain of was that the killer knew the layout of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Still, he hoped his presence might rattle some facts loose or even rattle the killer.

"Well, I'll see you at four." Bruce left without saying good-bye.

"Harry, what are you looking at?" Rick pointed at her.

"You."

"And?"

"You're good at reading people," she complimented him.

Surprised, he said, "Thanks"-took a deep breath-"and don't start poking your nose in this."

"I'm not poking my nose into it. I work here. The scalpel came through the mail." She threw up her hands.

"Harry, I know you." He nudged a mailbag with his toe. "All right then, you get back to work. Susan?"

"I dropped in for tea and to help. It's Valentine's Day."

"Oh, s.h.i.t." He slapped his hand to his head.

"Shall I call in roses for your wife?" Miranda volunteered.

Rick gratefully smiled at her. "Miranda, you're a lifesaver. I'm not going to have a minute to call myself. The early days of a case are critical."

"I'd be glad to do that." Miranda moved toward the phone as Rick flipped up the divider and walked out the front. "Coop," he called over his shoulder. "Start on the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hospital today. In case we missed something."

"Roger," she agreed as she reached in her pocket for the squad car keys.

They had arrived at the post office in separate cars.

"Any leads?" Harry asked the big question now that Rick was out of the post office.

"No," Cynthia Cooper truthfully answered. "It appears to be a straightforward case of murder. Brutal."

"Doesn't that usually mean revenge?" Susan, having read too many psychology books, commented.

"Yes and no." She folded her arms across her chest. "Many times when the killer harbors an intense hatred for the victim they'll disfigure the body. Fetish killings usually involve some type of ritual or weirdness, say, cutting off the nose. Just weird. This really is straightforward. The choice of a knife means the killer had to get physically close. It's more intimate than a gun but it's hard to get rid of a gun. Even if the killer had thrown it in the incinerator, something might be left. A knife is easy to hide, easy to dispose of, and not so easy to figure out. What I mean by that is, in lieu of the actual weapon, there are a variety of knife types that could do the job. It's not like pulling a .45 slug out of a body. Also, a knife is quiet."

"Especially in the hands of someone who uses knives for a living." Murphy pounced on the third mailbag.

Cynthia, taller than the other women, reached her arms over her head and stretched. She was tired even though it was morning, and her body ached. She hadn't gotten much sleep since the murder.

Miranda hung up the phone, having ordered flowers for Rick's wife. "Did I miss anything? You girls talking without me?"

"No. No suspects," Harry told her.

"'Be sure your sin will find you out.' Numbers, thirty-second chapter." She reached into the third mailbag to discover that Murphy had wriggled inside. "Oh!" She opened the drawstring wider. "You little stinker."

"Ha. Ha." Murphy backed farther into the ma.s.s of paper.

"Harry, if I get a day off anytime soon I'm coming out to your place." Coop smiled.

"Sure. If it's not too cold we can go for a ride. Oh, hey, before you go-and I know you must-have you heard that Little Mim is going to run against her father for the mayor's office?"

"No." Cynthia's shoulders cracked, she lowered her arms. "They'll be playing happy families at Dalmally." She laughed.

"Well." Harry shrugged, since the Sanburnes were a law unto themselves.

"Might shake things up a bit." Cynthia sighed, then headed for the door.

"I expect they've been shaken up enough already," Miranda wisely noted.

Harry made a quick swing to the hospital to find Larry Johnson. Although semi-retired, he seemed to work just as hard as he had before taking on Dr. Hayden McIntire as a partner.

She spied him turning into a room on the second-floor corridor.

She tiptoed to the room. No one was there except for Larry.

He looked up. "My article for the newsletter." He snapped his fingers. "It's in a brown manila envelope in the pa.s.senger seat of my car. Unlocked."

Harry looked at the TV bolted into the ceiling, at the hospital bed which could be raised and lowered. Then her attention was drawn to the IVAC unit, an infusion pump, a plastic bag on a pole. A needle was inserted usually into the patient's arm and the machine could be programmed to measure out the appropriate dose of medicine or solution.

"Larry, if I'm ever taken ill you'll be sure to fill my drip with Coca-Cola."

"Well, that's better than vodka-and I've seen alcohol sneaked into rooms in the most ingenious ways." He rolled the unit out of the way.

"Got any ideas?" She didn't need to say about the murder.

"No." He frowned.

"Nosy."

"I know." He smiled at her. "I apologize for not running my newsletter article to the post office. I'm a little behind today."

"No problem."

She left, found his red car easily, grasped the manila envelope, and drove home. Cindy Green, editor of the newsletter, would pick it up at the post office tomorrow.

If nothing else, the great thing about working at the post office was you were central to everybody.

12.

"Intruder! Intruder!" Tucker barked at the sound of a truck rolling down the driveway.

Murphy, her fabulously sensitive ears forward, laconically said, "It's Fair, you silly twit."

Murphy, like most cats, could identify tire sounds from a quarter of a mile away. Humans always wondered how cats knew when their mate or children had turned for home; they could hear the different crunching sounds. Humans could tell the difference between a big truck and a car but cats could identify the tire sounds of all vehicles.

Within a minute, Fair pulled up at the back door. Murphy jumped on the kitchen windowsill to watch him get out of the truck, then reach back in for a box wrapped in red paper with a white bow.

He glanced up at the sky, then walked to the porch, opened the door, stopped at the back kitchen door, and knocked. He opened the door before Harry could yell, "Come in."

"It's me."

"I know it's you." She walked out of the living room. "Your voice is deeper than Susan's."

"Happy Valentine's Day." He handed her the red box.

She kissed him on the cheek. "May I open it now?"

"That's the general idea." He removed his coat, hanging it on a peg by the back door.

"Wormer! Thanks." She kissed him again.

He'd given her a three-month supply of wormer for her horses. That might not be romantic to some women but Harry thought it was a perfect present. "I have one for you, too."

She skipped into the living room, returning with a book wrapped in brown butcher paper yet sporting a gleaming red ribbon and bow. "Happy Valentine's Day back at you."

He carefully opened the present, smoothing the paper and rolling up the ribbon. A leather-bound book, deep rich old tan with a red square between two raised welts on the spine, gave off a distinctive aroma. He opened to the t.i.tle page. The publication date was in Roman numerals.

"Wow. 1792." He flipped through the pages. "Ever notice how in old books, the ink on the page is jet black because the letter was cut into the page?"

"Yeah. The best." She stood next to him admiring the book, an old veterinary text printed in London.

"This is a beautiful present." He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her with more than affection. "You're something else."

"Just what, I'd like to know." Pewter, ready for extra crunchies, was in no mood for romance.

"I've got corn bread from Miranda, if you're hungry."

"I am!"

"Pewter, control yourself." Harry spoke to the now very vocal Pewter, who decided to sing a few choruses from Aida at high register.

Harry poured out crunchies.

"Yahoo." The cat dove in.

"Anything to shut her up." Harry laughed.

"She's got you trained." He pulled two plates out of the cupboard as Harry removed the tinfoil from the corn bread.

As they sat and ate she told him what had happened at the post office with Bruce Buxton.

After hearing the story, Fair shook his head. "Sounds like a cheap trick."

"Bruce doesn't win friends and influence people," Harry truthfully remarked.

"Arrogant. A lot of doctors are like that, or at least I think they are. Then again, a lot of vets are that way. I don't know what there is about medical knowledge that makes a man feel like G.o.d but Bruce sure does."

"You've got a big ego but you keep it in check. Maybe that's why you're such a good equine vet. Not good, really, the best." She smiled at him.

"Hey, keep talking." He beamed.

"Come to think of it, I don't know anyone that really does like Bruce. Too bad they couldn't have seen his face when he opened the Jiffy bag. Whoever sent it would have been thrilled with their success. 'Course if they could see him in the hunt field, they'd have a giggle, too."

Bruce liked the excitement of the chase, the danger of it, but in truth he was a barely adequate rider, as was Sam Mahanes. It was one more place where they could get in each other's way.

"Don't you wonder what Hank Brevard did to get himself killed? I mean, there's another guy not exactly on the top of anyone's 'A' list." Fair cut a bigger piece of corn bread. "Still, you didn't want to kill him. Now I could see someone doing in Bruce. Being around him is like someone rubbing salt in your wound. Murder is-dislocating."

"For the victim." Harry laughed at him.

"You know what I'm trying to say. It calls everything you know into question. What would push you to kill another human being?"

"Yeah, we were talking about that at volleyball." She pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows, her face a question. "Who knows?"

"Did you think Hank Brevard was smart?" Fair asked Harry. He trusted her reactions to people.

"M-m-m, he knew how to cover his a.s.s. I'm not sure I would call him smart. I guess he was smart about mechanical things or he wouldn't have been plant manager. And I suppose he'd be pretty efficient, good at scheduling maintenance checks, that sort of thing."

"Yeah," Fair agreed.

"No sense of culture, the arts, enjoying people."

"Cut and dried. I think the only people really upset at his death are his wife and family." Fair stood up and walked to the window. "d.a.m.n, this weather is a b.i.t.c.h. This afternoon the mercury climbed to fifty-two degrees and here comes the snow."