The Purrfect Murder

Most people don’t know the brand. It’s not extremely expensive. She bought six Montecristo Petit Edmundos, a very nice cigar. She said she smokes cigars when no one except for Mr. Lattimore is looking.” He smiled like the Cheshire cat.
    Neither one needed to comment on their friendship, which may well have tipped over into an affair.
    Cooper knew Folly’s husband was jealous. However, he hadn’t stepped in to end the friendship, so maybe it was just that.
    “Well, why don’t you select a very mild cigar for me and I will try it tonight?”
    He came back with a fat, long Montecristo. “Don’t worry about the size. The longer, the smoother the draw. Just try it, and don’t try to smoke all of it. A few pleasant notes.” He smiled while he rang up the bill, throwing in a large box of cigar matches. “From me to you.” He handed her a blue pack of Dunhills. “You will enjoy them.”
    “I know I will. Thank you.”
    “You always use a match to light your cigarette, no?”
    She nodded. “Yes.”
    “Good.” His hand swept over the case in the middle of the room. “Expensive, very pretty to hold in the hand, but the tobacco remembers the butane. A match, yes, always use a match. And don’t tell, because I need to sell those lighters.” He laughed.
    He was right, too. The oily note of butane could slightly taint the tobacco. Purists always used matches.
    She walked out like a kid from the candy store who was given a swirled cherry sucker. She knew that smoking was bad for your health. She truly believed everyone would be better off without it, but in her job she could be dead in a minute. Right now. An alarm could go off in a car in the parking lot or a store. She’d answer the call and the perp could blow her away. The thought of her mortality stayed close. So why not take a nicotine hit? She told herself she wasn’t really a smoker. She only bummed a cigarette a day from Rick.
    She opened the car, put the brown paper bag in the passenger seat, and fired the motor. He’d be thrilled with his carton of exquisite cigarettes.
             
    As Cooper drove back to the station, Harry was leaning over a paddock fence with Paul de Silva, looking at the Mineshaft colt, now nine months old. Big Mim produced good results in everything she did. She’d bred her broodmares to a variety of good sires, most of them middle range in price. The Mineshaft colt was anything but middle range, the stud fee being one hundred thousand dollars.
    Big Mim had been smart to take her best mare, the one with the best cross, to Mineshaft when she did, because the sire’s fee was bound to rise. The top end of the Thoroughbred market was very healthy. The middle and the low end had begun to sag, reflecting economic fear, punishing gas prices, and taxes that would most assuredly rise. The situation in the Mideast hardly engendered economic confidence, either.
    “What’s she going to do?” Harry admired the dark-bay fellow.
    “I think she’s going to keep him.”
    “Really?” This was news.
    “Says she hasn’t run a horse on the flat in decades.” Paul loved the horses, but Tazio’s situation had dampened his usual high spirits.
    “Heard anything?”
    “Ned sees her every day. Even when he’s in Richmond. I went down Sunday.”
    “How did she look?”
    “Beautiful.” A flash of the courtier returned. “Tired. Worried.”
    “I thought I’d go down Friday.”
    “Set bail.”
    “I heard.” Harry folded her hands as she leaned over the top rail.
    “Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. For a woman who has never even had a parking ticket.”
    “Murder One.” Harry looked down at her boots. “I’m sorry, Paul. We’ll find a way. You know we’re all trying.”
    The cats, Tucker, and Brinkley watched the Mineshaft foal and the others, too.
    “I want Mommy.”
Brinkley’s soft brown eyes filled with tears.
    “Be strong. She needs you to be strong,”
Tucker advised.
“We’re here to help.”
    “I miss her so much. Paul is a nice man, but I miss her scent, her voice. I love her. She loves me. She is my best friend.”
    “We know how you feel,”
Pewter commiserated.
    For a moment, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker remained silent, for Pewter rarely admitted how much she loved Harry. She pretended to be aloof.
    “Brinkley, did your mom ever say anything about Carla? Not how much trouble she was, but if she’d seen her, say, with another man?”
    “No. She said that she thought Carla and Mike McElvoy would