Free Whisker of Evil by Rita Mae Brown Page A

of Aunt Tally’s land before finally turning back.
    Harry and Fair each took some of Susan’s finds as she was tottering. They turned off the old path, walked up the narrow deer path, emerging on top of a rolling, low foothill about a mile from Harry’s westernmost border. These three had grown up here. Dropped from a helicopter anywhere between the Afton Gap and Sugar Hollow, they could find their way home.
    At the westernmost corner of Harry’s land, where it touched both the land of Blair Bainbridge and Aunt Tally, stood Blair and Little Mim. An old quince tree marked the spot where the three pieces of land touched one another.
    Harry waved, little bits of dirt falling on her hair from the brown bottle she carried in her right hand. In her left she had a cobalt-blue medicine bottle. Blair and Little Mim, surprised to see them all, waved back.
    Within minutes they were at the old quince tree.
    â€œWhat are you all doing back here?” Blair said.
    â€œLook!” Susan put down her pop bottle. “Nehi. Now, when was the last time you saw that? Or Yoo-Hoo? And then I’ve got this old Pepsi bottle here. I mean, this one’s even before Joan Crawford took over the company.”
    â€œJoan Crawford ran Pepsi?” Little Mim thought that was odd.
    â€œYes.” Susan, who avidly read movie-star biographies, supplied the information. “She married the president of Pepsi, and when he died she took over. And look at this blue. Have you ever seen such a blue?” She pointed to the flat-sided cobalt-blue bottle that Harry carried.
    â€œSusan, what do you intend to do with all this?” Little Mim, smiling, wondered.
    â€œWash them out, put them on my windowsill, and I’ll—”
    â€œMove them because you won’t be able to clean around them,” Harry finished her sentence.
    â€œNo, I won’t. I’ll put stuff in to root.”
    â€œI know what this is about,” Fair genially said. “Ned will get so tired of the clutter, he’ll finally build you that little greenhouse you’ve always wanted.”
    â€œHey, I never thought of that.” Susan brightened, then her smile faded. “No, he won’t. I’m getting the interior of the house painted. You can’t believe how expensive it is. For just three rooms and the trim it’s almost eight thousand dollars.”
    â€œBig rooms,” Harry simply said.
    â€œHell, Harry, it’s not the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. They aren’t that big.”
    â€œIf it were the Hall of Mirrors, Susan, you wouldn’t need to get much painted.”
    â€œWill you shut up.” Susan playfully put her hand over Harry’s mouth, which now had a dirt smear. “Oops.”
    â€œMaybe that’s where the expression ‘Eat dirt’ came from.” Blair laughed.
    Harry wiped off her mouth, but a little of the grit lodged between her teeth. “Yuck.”
    â€œAre you checking your borders?” Fair asked Blair.
    Little Mim answered for him. “He’s trying to figure out how much land he really has, since this old place was always described as two hundred and thirty acres more or less.”
    â€œSurveying costs so much that folks just approximated and no one at the courthouse much minded. It’s such a nice piece of land.” Harry picked up a blade of grass to chew to get the earthy taste out of her mouth.
    â€œRemember Herbie’s old uncle?” Little Mim recalled a slender gentleman, the last Jones to inhabit the farm.
    â€œBryson,” Susan said. “He was so courtly.”
    â€œHe used to sit up in the family graveyard and read Greek. He had a wonderful faculty for languages but wasn’t much of a farmer or businessman.” Fair had liked the old gentleman.
    â€œUsed to drive the Rev crazy because he couldn’t go to seminary and look after the farm, too. You keep the cemetery looking good for Herb,” Harry