Pawing Through the Past

by Rita Mae Brown

Pewter had hoped for a rise out of Murphy. “Me, too.”

  They bounced onto the steps of the side door. The old, two-story building had a front door with pilasters, a back door into the gym, and two side doors which were simple double doors.

  One side door was propped open. They walked down the main hall toward the gym.

  Susan Tucker, Deborah Kingsmill, and Bonnie Baltier barely noticed the cats as they walked by them.

  “—ruin the whole reunion.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Susan replied.

  “I wish everyone would stop speculating about who Charlie got pregnant. I fully expect everyone to sit down with their yearbooks and scrutinize every female in the book from all three classes. That’s not why we’re here and anyway, nothing anyone can do about it.”

  “Baltier, people love a mystery,” Susan said.

  “No one even knows if it’s true,” Deborah Kingsmill sensibly replied. “Because he was so handsome people make up stories. If it isn’t true they want it to be true. It’s like those tabloid stories you read about superstars drinking lizard blood.”

  The women laughed.

  “What’s so strange about drinking lizard blood?” Pewter asked.

  “Pewter.” Mrs. Murphy reached out and swatted Pewter’s tail.

  As the cats laughed and the three women headed back to the gym, Harry came into the hall from the front door.

  Before the cats could run to her and Tucker, a shout from the men’s locker room diverted their attention. Dennis Rablan threw open the door, stepped outside, leaned against the wall and slid down. He hit the floor with a thump. He scrambled up on his hands and knees, tried to clear his head and stood upright.

  As Susan, Bonnie, and Deborah ran to him from one direction, Harry and Tucker ran from the other.

  “Call an ambulance,” Dennis croaked.

  * * *

  38

  “Don’t go in there.” Dennis barred the way as Harry and Susan moved toward the men’s locker-room door.

  “They’ll never notice us.” Mrs. Murphy slipped in since the door was easy to push open. Pewter and Tucker followed.

  They ran into the open square where the urinals were placed. Three toilet stalls were at a right angle to the urinals. A toilet stall door slowly swung open, not far.

  “There.” Pewter froze.

  Rex Harnett’s feet stuck out under the stall door.

  “I’ll check it out.” Tucker dashed under the adjoining stall, then squeezed under the opening between the two stalls.

  Mrs. Murphy, unable to contain her famous curiosity, slipped under from the other stall since Rex was in the middle one.

  “He’s dog meat,” Mrs. Murphy blurted out, then glanced at Tucker. “Sorry.”

  “You’d better be.”

  “What is it? What is it?” Pewter meowed. Being a trifle squeamish, she remained outside.

  Face distorted, turning purple, Rex’s eyes bulged out of his head; the tight rope around his neck caused the unpleasant discoloration. His hands were tied behind his back, calf-roping style, quick, fast, and not expected to hold long. Between his eyes a neat hole bore evidence to a shot at close range with a small-caliber gun. No blood oozed from the entry point but blood did trickle out of his ears.

  “Fast work.” Murphy drew closer to the body. “What does your nose tell you?”

  “What is it!” Pewter screeched.

  “Shot between the eyes. And trussed up, sort of, scaredy cat.”

  “I’m not scared. I’m sensitive,” Pewter responded to Murphy, a tough cat under any circumstances.

  Although the odor of excrement and urine masked other smells as Rex’s muscles had completely relaxed in death, Tucker sniffed the ankles, got on her hind legs and sniffed the inside of the wrists, since his arms were turned palm outward.

  “No fear smell. This is a fresh kill. Maybe he’s been dead fifteen minutes. Maybe not even that, Murphy. So if he had been terrified, I’d know. That scent lingers, especially in human armpits.” She reached higher. “No. Either he never registered what hit him, or he didn’t believe it. Like Charlie Ashcraft.”

  “And Leo Burkey.” The sleek cat emerged from under the stall to face a cross Pewter.

  “I am not a scaredy cat.”

  “Shut up, Pewter.” Murphy smacked her on the side of the face. “Just shut up. You know what this means. It means the murders are about this reunion. And it means that Marcy Wiggins didn’t kill Charlie. She may have been killed because she got too close. We can’t discount her death as suicide.”

  “What are we going to do?” Tucker, upset and wanting to get Harry out of the school, whimpered.

  “I wish I knew.” Murphy ran her paw over her whiskers, nervously.

  “We know one thing.” Pewter moved toward the door. “Whoever this is, is fast, cold-blooded, and wastes no opportunities.”

  “We know something else.” Tee Tucker softly padded up next to the gray cat. “The murderer wants the attention. Most murderers want to hide. This one wants everyone to know he’s here.”

  “That’s what scares me.” Murphy solemnly pushed open the door as the humans from both reunions piled into the highly polished hallway.

  * * *

  39

  Harry could hear the wheels of the gurney clicking over the polished hall as Diana Robb carted away Rex Harnett’s body. Her stomach flopped over, a ripple of fear flushed her face. She took a deep breath.

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” Market Shiflett said under his breath.

  Harry and Market walked into a classroom only to find Miranda, Tracy, and others there from the other reunion. The two cats and dog quietly filed in. Mrs. Murphy sat on the window ledge in the back, Pewter sat on Harry’s desk, and Tucker watched from just inside the doorway.

  Within moments, BoomBoom entered. “After all our hard work. Twenty years ruined.”

  “Really ruined for Rex,” Harry said, but with no edge to her voice.

  “Well . . . yes,” BoomBoom said after a delay.

  Susan ducked into the room. “Most people are filing back into the gym. Cynthia Cooper is herding us in there. I guess we’ll be questioned en masse.”

  “Lot of good that will do.” BoomBoom ran her forefinger through her long hair. “The murderer isn’t going to confess. After all, any of the men could have killed Rex.” Because she didn’t protest that the murder had nothing to do with the reunion, meant she’d accepted the fact that it was connected.

  “So every man is a suspect?” Harry’s voice rose in disbelief.

  “Girls, this won’t get you anywhere.” Miranda’s lovely voice shut them up. “Whatever is going on presents a danger to everyone, but we can’t let the killer erode the trust we’ve built over the years. The way to solve these heinous crimes is to draw closer together, not farther apart.”

  “You’re right,” Susan said.

  “What if one of us were to see the killer? How long do you think we’d live?” BoomBoom trembled.

  “Not long,” Pewter answered.

  “Let’s not give way to fear,” Market advised. “Hard not to, I know.”

  “Maybe the person who did it got away. That’s why Cynthia and Rick want us in the gym, to count heads.” BoomBoom allowed herself a moment of wishful thinking.

  Tracy leaned toward her. “Whoever did this is in the gym.”

  “Come on then, let’s get it over with.” Harry marched out of the classroom.

  “Come on.” Mrs. Murphy tagged behind as Pewter and Tucker followed, too.

  “If there’s a killer in there, I’m not going.” BoomBoom’s voice rose.

  “You’re safer in there than you are out here.” Miranda put her hand under BoomBoom’s elbow, propelling her out of the classroom.

  * * *

  40

  “Class of 1950 over here.” Sheriff Shaw indicated the left side of the gym. “Class of 1980 to the right. Who has the rosters?”

  “I do.” Miranda stepped forward with
her attendance list.

  Rick took it from her hand. “Coop, go down the list with Miranda. Meet each person and check them off.”

  “Right, boss.”

  “Okay, what about 1980?”

  “I’ve got it.” Bonnie Baltier walked back to the table, picked up the Xeroxed sheets, and walked back, handing them to the sheriff.

  “You stay with me. I want you to check off each name and show me who the person is. Use a colored pen. You’ve already got them checked off in black.”

  “Anyone got a colored pen?” Baltier called out.

  “I do.” Bitsy stepped forward, handing Bonnie a red pen. “E.R. is a member of this class and he was with me in the parking lot at the time of the murder,” she told the sheriff.

  E.R. called out, “Bitsy, don’t bother the sheriff.”

  Chris Sharpton moved up alongside Rick. “It’s not my reunion.”

  “Well, it is for now. Sit down.” He pointed to the check-in table. “I’ll get to you last and then you can go home. I assume you want to go home.”

  “Yes,” she nodded slowly.

  “All right.” Rick walked with Bonnie. “One-two-three.”

  As they worked their way down the line, Harry observed how differently people deal with authority. Some classmates answered directly. Others exhibited attitude, not at all helpful under the circumstances. The doctors in the room felt it necessary to behave like authority figures themselves. A few people were intimidated. Others were clearly frightened.

  As they neared the end of the list, Hank Bittner asked to go to the bathroom.

  “You’ll have to wait until I’m through with this. Another five minutes. We’re almost at the end.”

  Bob Shoaf called out, “Don’t forget Fair Haristeen.”

  “I sent an officer out to find him.” Rick’s voice remained even. He felt as if he were a teacher with a room full of misbehaving children. In a way, he was.

  “We’re also missing Dennis Rablan.” Bonnie scanned the familiar yet older faces. “Hey, anyone seen Dennis?”

  “The last I saw, he’d come out of the bathroom,” Harry spoke up, and a few others corroborated her statement.

  “Did he walk down the hall? Go outside for a breath of fresh air?” Rick tapped his fingers against his thigh. He held on to his temper but he was greatly disturbed. Dennis might be the witness he needed—or the killer. However, there was a lot of commotion. People don’t expect murder at their high-school reunion. And they don’t think to keep track of one another.

  “Tucker, you stick with Mom. Pewter and I will scout around for Dennis,” Mrs. Murphy ordered the corgi.

  Pewter was out the door before Mrs. Murphy finished her sentence.

  Since the class of 1950 consisted of forty-six people, Cynthia had finished the name check and was taking down whatever information the attendees might have. Nothing useful emerged since all of them, including Tracy Raz, were gathered in the cafeteria for the welcoming ceremonies.

  “Boss”—Cynthia crossed over to Rick—“we can let them go. At least, let them go back to the cafeteria.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Cynthia dismissed the class.

  Martha Jones of the 1950 class said to a squatty fellow, bald as a cue ball, “I’m not at all sure I want to go back to the cafeteria.”

  “There’s safety in numbers,” he replied. “This is their problem, not ours.”

  As the last member of the class of 1950 filed out, Cynthia joined Rick.

  “Let’s divide them into groups of ten.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think I can hold them here all day. The best we can do is—”

  Hank Bittner interrupted him. “Sheriff, the five minutes is over.”

  “Go on.” Rick waved him off. “Everyone else stay here.”

  Fair Haristeen passed Hank as he made for the men’s room, stopped in front of the one cordoned off, then turned heading in the other direction, toward another bathroom.

  As Rick questioned Fair, who sat next to Bitsy, E.R., and Chris, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter prowled the hallway, sticking their heads in every classroom.

  “Nothing here. If someone were dead and stuffed in a closet we could smell him,” Pewter remarked. “Fresh blood carries.”

  “You know we have ten times the scent receptors in our nostrils than humans do,” Murphy casually said. “And they say that hunting hounds have twenty million receptors. More even than Tee Tucker.”

  “I’d keep that to myself. You know how proud Tucker is of her scenting abilities.” The tiger peeked into the cafeteria, where the class of 1950 was again getting settled, disquieted though they were. “Pewter, let’s go upstairs.”

  The cats turned around and walked to the stairway to the second floor. There was one stairwell at the end of the building but they walked up the main one, the wide one, which was in the middle of the hall. The risers bore thousands of scuff marks; the treads, beaten down also, bore testimony to the ceaseless pounding of teenaged feet. Although the school sanded and finished the stairs once a year the wood had become thin, concave in spots, the black rubber of sneakers leaving the most obvious marks on the worn surface.

  The cats reached the second floor. A chair rail ran along the green walls; small bits had broken off and were painted over. The floor was as worn as the stair treads.

  Mrs. Murphy turned into the first classroom, hopped on the windowsill, and looked down.

  Pewter jumped up to join her. As she looked down she saw a bluejay dart from a majestic blue spruce. “Hate those birds.”

  “They don’t like you either.”

  “What are we looking for?” Pewter sneezed. “Dust,” she said.

  “Dennis Rablan. First order of business. Second order of business is to memorize the school. We can see a lot from here.”

  “Wonder if Dennis is dead?”

  “I don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy put her paws on the wall, gently sliding down. “He was an average-sized man. There aren’t too many places a killer can stuff a fellow like that. Closets. Freezers. Let’s check out each room, go down the back stairway, and then we can check out the cars. I don’t remember what kind of car Denny drove, do you?”

  “No. Wasn’t a car. It was one of those minivans.”

  They inspected each classroom, each bathroom, then trotted down the back stairs. They jumped on the hood of each car in the parking lot but no bodies were slumped over on the front seat.

  “Don’t jump on Mom’s hood. She gets testy about paw prints.” Pewter giggled.

  A sheriff’s department car pulled into the parking lot. Sitting in the front seat next to the officer was Dennis Rablan. The cats watched as the officer parked, got out, and Dennis, handcuffed, swung his feet out, touching the ground.

  “Please take these off,” Dennis pleaded. “I’m not a killer. Don’t make me walk into the reunion like this.”

  “You left your reunion in a hurry, buddy, you can walk right back in wearing these bracelets. Eighty miles an hour in front of the Con-Agra Building. If you aren’t guilty then you’re running scared.”

  The cats followed behind the humans, who didn’t notice them. As the officer, a young man of perhaps twenty-five, propelled Dennis into the gym, people turned. Their expressions ranged from disbelief to mild shock.

  “I didn’t do it!” Dennis shouted before anyone could say anything.

  “Sheriff, I searched his van and found a hunting knife and a rope. No gun.”

  “Let me see the rope.” Sheriff Shaw left for a moment as Dennis stood in the middle of the room.

  He quickly returned, wearing thin rubber gloves, rope in hand. “Rablan, what’s this?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have a rope in my van this morning.”

  “Well, you sure have one in your van now.”

  “I didn’t do it. I thought Rex Harnett was a worthless excuse for a man. I did. A useless parasite.” He turned toward his classmates. “I can’t remember him ever doing anything for anybody but himself.”
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  “Maybe so but he didn’t deserve to die for it.” Hank Bittner, back from the bathroom, spoke calmly.

  “Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy softly called, “sniff the rope.”

  The beautiful corgi walked over to the sheriff, her claws clicking on the gym floor. She lifted her nose before Rick noticed. “Talcum powder.”