The Purrfect Murder

It’s been made political. You faced it.” Harry lowered her voice.
    A long pause followed where the only sounds were the cats batting the ball—since Mrs. Murphy had managed to snag it, then Pewter got it back—the dogs joyously tossing the fuzzy, and the pronounced breathing of Little Mim.
    “I feel terrible. I was wrong. You heard Herb’s sermon today about the sanctity of life, but the issue is when life begins. We all agree it’s sacred, or at least Christians do.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Better never say that in public.”
    “Just think what your Buddhist constituency would say.” Harry couldn’t resist the dig, although the Sangsters, remarkable souls, were the few Buddhists in Crozet.
    Little Mim folded her hands. “If I’m pushed by my constituency, I will say something. But I won’t do it because of Mother. I just won’t.” Her jaw jutted outward.
    “Back to feeling guilty: you were a sophomore in college. How could you have cared for a child? You weren’t ready.”
    “Millions of other women do it.”
    “They do, but you,” Harry chose her words carefully, “you are highly educated. You could make choices. Many of those other women really can’t, the law notwithstanding. And what comes of it? Poverty. A cycle of poverty that’s hard to break, and we all know the men tend to leave.”
    “Yes, for the most part they do.”
    “I don’t think men have any right to vote on women’s reproductive decisions. I feel the same way in reverse. What if vasectomy became a political issue? I don’t believe you or I should vote on it. I don’t have a right to make decisions about a man’s body.”
    “But we did when we sent them to war through the draft.” Little Mim hit the bull’s-eye.
    “Yes, but those days are gone.” Harry considered this. “And being drafted wasn’t about their reproductive equipment or their future as fathers.”
    “Fine line, I think.”
    “It’s absurd, isn’t it?”
    “What?”
    “The times in which we live. Do you think other Americans see the contradictions and the corruption?”
    Little Mim took a long sip. “I do, but no one has emerged to focus the anger, to build for the future. Most of what’s done is Band-Aids. It’s going to take tremendous courage to reform root and branch.”
    “Think you can do it?”
    “Yes.”
    “You know, you’re a lot like your mother.”
    Little Mim sat bolt upright. “No woman ever wants to hear that!” Then she flopped back. “But I suppose there’s some truth to it. I wish I were more extroverted, like Dad. I have to work at this shake-and-howdy stuff.”
    “You’re doing great. Well, I’ve said what I had to say. Obviously, your mother will hear all about it.”
    “She sent you?”
    “No. She wouldn’t do that. Miranda asked me to talk to you, because she’s worried that this will cause social rifts, and she’s worried about the fund-raiser for Poplar Forest. She told me your mother said you couldn’t sit at her table.”
    “Mother is being very petty. She also threatened to cut me out of her will. Go ahead, Mother. Just go ahead.” Little Mim waved her hand. “Aunt Tally named me as her heir, and that’s half the family fortune. It would kill Mother for me to be completely independent.”
    “Little Mim, none of us is ever completely independent of our mother. Even Hitler couldn’t shake his love and grief over his mother’s early death.”
    “I can try,” she uttered defiantly. “Come on, let’s go to the cottage. Blair and I are building an addition. You haven’t seen the plan.” As they left the main house, Little Mim called out, “Aunt Tally, we’re going to the cottage.”
    “All right, dear. Good to see you, Harry.”
    “Good to see you, Aunt Tally.”
    The formal gardens, with their boxwood clipped and crisp, overflowed with fall flowers. Aunt Tally kept up the old spring gardens, summer gardens, and fall gardens laid out with such thoughtfulness back in 1834. Her additions to the original plan were to have climbing roses on every fence line and over the old stone outbuildings and to nurture shiny dark-green ivy to embrace the gorgeous stone stables.
    Those stables finally housed four horses. Like all horsewomen, the first thing Little Mim did when she moved into the cottage was to refurbish the stables, fallow since 1982. Blair attacked the cottage, realizing, thanks to Harry, that horse people are in the grip of an obsession not addressed by