The Purrfect Murder

back in my day.”
    “True enough, but I expect even then there were murderers, cranks. You just didn’t have twenty-four-hour media to inundate you. Actually, I think coverage encourages more crime. Just sets nutcases right off. They become antiheroes.” Harry noticed a mouse pop out from behind the tack trunk up against the wall, the one containing her special coolers. “I haven’t seen the news or read the paper today. Spent the morning at a vestry-board meeting. Anything new?”
    “No. Mim’s in a tiz.” Miranda mentioned her old friend, Big Mim Sanburne, a very wealthy and imperious resident of Crozet.
    Although only a size 4, Mim was called Big because her daughter—same name—was called Little.
    Many whispered “the Queen of Crozet” behind Big Mim’s back.
    “About Will?”
    “She can’t stand things like that. I know there are times when she can pluck my last nerve, but she does have a strong sense of justice. She’s been on the phone canvassing everyone since she found out.”
    “What does she think she’ll find that Rick won’t?”
    “She believes people will tell her things they might not tell the sheriff, especially other women.” Miranda summed up Big Mim’s thoughts.
    “She has a point there,” Harry conceded.
    “And the other thing is, she’s furious at Little Mim, so furious she won’t speak to her.”
    This past summer Little Mim had married a male model, Blair Bainbridge. Her mother spent a small fortune on her daughter’s exquisite wedding, a second marriage at that, and she expected obedience. But then, Mim expected obedience from everyone.
    “Now what?” Harry, like everyone else in Crozet, was accustomed to family spats.
    “Little Mim won’t make a statement declaring a woman has a right to choose and this murder is horrible.”
    Harry was incredulous. “I can’t believe that.” She thought a minute. “Well, no one has come forward to say they shot Will because he terminated pregnancies. She may be prudent.”
    “Prudent! She told Big Mim she’s the vice mayor of Crozet, elected as a member of the Republican Party, and her mother knows perfectly well the party plank about overturning
Roe v. Wade.
Now, mind you, I am very uncomfortable with this, and as you know, the Church of the Holy Light is dead set against abortion.” Miranda was a member of the small charismatic church. “But I’m not eighteen. I’m far from the danger of an unwanted pregnancy. Well, anyway, you know what I think about all this. It’s Little Mim who’s the fly in the ointment. Mim says if her daughter doesn’t make some kind of statement, she is all but countenancing such a dreadful deed.”
    “Mim’s right. There’s no reason that Little Mim can’t say she feels deep sympathy for the Wylde family and she finds such an action repugnant. She doesn’t have to go on about
Roe v. Wade.
”
    “She’s dug her pointy toes in. Of course, her father made a statement immediately.”
    “Saw that.”
    Jim Sanburne was the mayor of Crozet and a Democrat. It complicated family life as well as the running of the town.
    “And Mim says that Little Mim and Blair can’t sit at her table for the Poplar Forest fund-raisers. So Little Mim said she wouldn’t go, and Big Mim about tore her hair out by the roots. I mean, I never heard such a thing, and the only reason I heard it is I was at Mim’s to discuss her zinnias as well as this new kind of chestnut tree she is determined to plant, but that’s neither here nor there. I tell you what, sweetie, it was scalding.”
    “Sorry I missed it.”
    “My ears are still ringing. Anyway, Big Mim said if her daughter and her son-in-law missed the fund-raiser—one dear to Mim’s heart—that she would cut her off without a penny.”
    “Big Mim said that?”
    “Did. Indeed she did, and I tell you what, we’ve been friends for all of our seventy-some years and I have never, ever heard Mimsy threaten her child like that. It’s beyond comprehension. I mean, over this?”
    But it wasn’t beyond comprehension. Harry, Little Mim’s contemporary, knew that Little Mim had had an abortion in her sophomore year at college. No one knew except Susan and Harry, not even Miranda.
    “This is pretty upsetting.”
    “Yes it is, because for one thing, how can Little Mim sit at anyone else’s table? Whoever invites her will be in her mother’s bad books, and no one is that foolish.”
    “What a mess.” Harry sighed. “It’s a week until the ball.