Pawing Through the Past

by Rita Mae Brown

  The two cats followed Dennis, running hard, his right arm hanging uselessly by his side. He turned, hit the doors with his left side, and escaped.

  The double doors swung shut, keeping the cats inside.

  “Damn!” Mrs. Murphy spit, the hair on her tail puffed, her eyes huge.

  As Susan reached Harry, Tucker, hearing a second set of footsteps, bounded up the stairwell. Tucker, now on the second floor, heard footsteps thump down the far stairway. The corgi ran down the hall, reaching the top of the back stairwell as the human hit the bottom, turned right and, narrowly missing the cats, opened the doors and escaped. The cats escaped with him. He was in black sweats with a ski mask covering his face.

  Within seconds Tucker was at the bottom of the stairs. With her greater bulk, she pushed a door open and followed the cats.

  About a hundred yards ahead of them they heard footsteps drop over the bank; they followed as the figure ran toward the houses behind the school. He disappeared, they heard a car door slam and a car took off, heading west, no lights.

  “Damnit!” Tucker cursed.

  “It was Dennis Rablan,” Murphy panted.

  “But who was the guy upstairs?” Tucker kept sniffing the ground.

  “Let’s follow the tracks,” Pewter wisely suggested. They followed two sets of tracks to the end of the schoolyard.

  Looking down at the houses below, Murphy said, “I would never have thought Dennis capable of these murders. I can’t believe it but I smelled him. It was him.”

  “Let’s go back inside,” Tucker said.

  “We can’t open the doors.” Pewter sat in the cool grass.

  “I can. Come on.”

  Once inside, they checked down the hall. Everyone was around Harry.

  “Let’s go upstairs and work backwards. There may be a scent up there that will help us.” Pewter started up the back stairs.

  The other two followed.

  Tucker, nose to the ground, moved along the hall. Pewter, pupils wide in the dark, checked each room, as did Mrs. Murphy.

  “English Leather.” Tucker identified the cologne. “Enough to mask the scent of an entire regiment. Odd. So heavy a scent even humans can smell it. Why advertise your presence like that?”

  * * *

  * * *

  “What’s this?” Pewter stopped in the hall, patting at a thin, twisted piece of rope with a wooden dowel on each end.

  “A garotte!” Mrs. Murphy exclaimed. “He was going to strangle someone.”

  “Think we can get Susan or another human up here?” Tucker said.

  “No, they’re worried about Mom and we should be, too,” Pewter replied.

  “We can’t just leave it here.” Murphy thought a moment. “Tucker, pick it up. Drop it at their feet. When things quiet down one of the humans will notice.”

  Without another word, Tucker picked up the garotte, and hurried down the stairs to Harry.

  Rick Shaw and Cynthia attended to her. They had just arrived at the school. Hank, Fair, and Susan knelt down with Harry.

  “It’s not crushed, thank God.” Cynthia gently felt Harry’s windpipe.

  Harry still couldn’t speak but she was breathing better.

  Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker quietly walked down the stairs.

  Tucker dropped the garotte at Rick Shaw’s feet. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, bent over, and picked it up. He whistled low.

  Tucker eagerly looked up at him, then turned, walking toward the stairwell.

  Harry whispered—her throat felt on fire—“They chased him.”

  “There were two of them!” Pewter, in frustration, yowled.

  Rick followed Tucker up the stairs. The dog stopped where Pewter found the twisted rope. Although it was cool on the second floor—the heat was turned down for the weekend—Rick was sweating. He knew what a close call Harry had suffered. And he also knew because Jason called in on the squad car radio that he had lost Dennis Rablan at the intersection of Route 240 and Route 250. A big semi crossed the intersection and when Jason could finally turn, Dennis was out of sight. The officer drove down Beaver Dam Road, turned back on 250 to check that out, turned west on 250, and finally doubled back on 240. No trace.

  Slowly he walked down the hallway, down the back stairwell, to the doors. He pushed open the doors, accompanied by Tucker, and walked to the edge of the hills.

  He knelt down; the grass was flattened. He stood up and quickly walked back to the school. He and Cynthia had locked the doors at the top of each stairwell. He walked up the stairs. The door was open, a stopper under it so it wouldn’t swing back and forth. The lock had been neatly picked. He walked the length of the hall to find the other door, also propped open. It had been opened from the inside. Then he came downstairs and checked on Harry again.

  Harry, sitting with her back against the wall, was pushing away a glass of water Susan wanted her to drink. She was breathing evenly now.

  Rick knelt down with her. “Can you talk?”

  “A little,” she whispered. She told him about hearing a sound, going up a step to turn on the lights, and hearing a man’s voice say, “Don’t, you idiot.” Then he hit hard and she fell back.

  “Did the voice sound familiar?” Rick put his hand on her knee.

  “Yes, but . . . it was just a whisper. I didn’t recognize it, and yet, there was something familiar. Eerie.”

  “Height?”

  “Maybe five nine, ten, average, I guess.”

  “Build?”

  “Average.”

  “And you couldn’t see the face?”

  “Ski mask.” She reached for the water now. Susan handed it to her.

  Rick stood back up, asked everyone where they were. In the parking lot, they all confirmed one another’s presence, except for Susan, who waited at the doors for Harry.

  “Listen to me,” Rick commanded. “Say nothing of this. Harry, if you can’t speak normally for the next few days, put out that you have laryngitis. Let’s see if we can disturb our guy. He’s going to want to know what you’ve seen.”

  “Okay.”

  “Next thing. Keep someone with you at all times.”

  “I wish they could listen. Dennis Rablan!” Murphy meowed, knowing it was hopeless.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Murphy.” Harry reached for the cat. Pewter came over, too.

  “You’re covered at work. Miranda is there,” Rick said.

  “I’ll stay,” Fair gladly volunteered.

  “Z’at all right with you?” Cynthia, sensitive to the situation, asked Harry.

  “Yes.” Harry nodded.

  “Do you think he was waiting in the stairwell for Harry?” Susan shuddered.

  “I don’t know,” Rick grimly replied. “If he was up there throughout the dinner, he’d have seen who was leaving and who was staying. If he’d gone to the dinner and then come back, well, maybe he hoped his intended victim was still there.” He turned to Harry and then Fair: “This is a highly intelligent and bold individual. Take nothing for granted.” Rick was seething inside that he hadn’t posted a man upstairs. He assumed locking the doors would do the job.

  The three animals looked at one another. They knew they’d be on round-the-clock duty, too.

  * * *

  47

  Like most stubborn people, Harry failed to realize how shock would affect her. She thought she was fine. She was happy to go home but surprised that when she walked through the kitchen door a wave of exhaustion washed over her, adding to the throb caused by the headache. She wanted to talk to Fair but couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  “Honey, you need to go to bed.” He lifted her out of the chair into which she’d slumped.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so tired. Maybe I should take more painkiller.”

  “No. You’ve had enough.”

  Too wiped out to protest, she meekly let him walk her into the bedroom and fell into bed.

  “I’ll sleep by the kitchen door,” Tucker declared.
r />   “I’ll take the front door.” Mrs. Murphy chose her spot.

  “Well, I’ll sleep in the bedroom then. What if someone climbs through the window?” Pewter dashed to the bedroom before the others could protest.

  Tracy came home at midnight, whistling as he opened the kitchen door. Fair, stretched out on the sofa, swung his long legs to the floor.

  “Fair?”

  “Had a good night?”

  “Wonderful. I feel like a kid again. I even kissed Miranda on her doorstep.” He smiled broadly, then considered Fair on the sofa. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No.” Fair walked into the kitchen, reached under the cupboard by the door, pulled out a bottle of Talisker scotch, and poured them each a nightcap. They moved to the cheerful, if threadbare, living room, where Fair told Tracy everything he could remember from the evening.

  A long, long silence followed as Tracy stared into the pale gold liquid in his glass. “We were fiddling while Rome burned, I guess. That son of a bitch was over our heads the whole time.”

  “Harry could have been killed.” Fair put his glass down on the coffee table, first sliding a coaster under it. “And whoever it is may fear she recognized him through his voice or way of going.”

  “Way of going?”

  “Ah,” Fair explained, “a horse has a special movement and I or any good horseman, really, can identify her by her gait. A way of going. For instance, you have an athlete’s walk. I might be able to identify you even if you were in costume—or BoomBoom Craycroft, that sashay.”

  “The sheriff’s command to act as though she has laryngitis is a good one for flushing him out but not so good for Harry. She knows she’s bait?”

  “Of course. Rick will have plainclothes men around the post office. He’s got the house covered now. There’s only one drive in and out.”

  “Somehow that’s not very reassuring.”

  “No.” Fair picked up his glass again, holding it between both hands.

  “Do you have any ideas about who, what, why?”

  “No, well, not exactly. I told you Rick Shaw’s idea, that this is someone who was in love with Ron Brindell. Or at least is avenging him.”

  Tracy emptied his glass, then leaned toward Fair. “You know what, Buddy? I’m sixty-eight years old and I don’t know a damn thing. Do people snap? Can anyone snap in a given situation? Are some weak and some strong? Are there really saints and sinners? Don’t know but I do know once a person loses their fear of their own death, once they no longer care about belonging to other people, they’ll do anything. Anything. My God, look at Rwanda. Sarajevo. Belfast. Kill children. Kill anything.”

  “Presumably those killings are politically motivated.”

  “Yeah, that’s another load, too. Some people just want to kill. Give them a reason so they can cover up their murderous selves. The church can give them a reason, the state. I’ve seen enough to know there are no good reasons.”

  “I’m with you there.”

  “Whoever this is no longer cares. He’s given up on people. He has nothing to lose. I also think he intended to finish off his list at the reunion and he’s been thwarted. He’s angry. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll make a mistake.”

  Fair nodded in agreement. “The more I think about this reunion murderer, the more the finger points to Dennis Rablan.”

  “There are three left.” Tracy held up three fingers.

  “Two. Dennis Rablan and Bob Shoaf.”

  “Three. Hank Bittner.”

  “He said he wasn’t in the locker room.”

  “He knows too much. Three. And there’s a strong possibility one of the three is the killer.”

  “I’d hate to be one of those guys.” Fair’s deep voice dropped even lower.

  Truer words were never spoken.

  * * *

  48

  “Getting the flu?” Chris asked Harry sympathetically when she heard her voice on the phone that Sunday morning.

  “Laryngitis,” Harry replied.

  “You do sound scratchy. I called to apologize. I chickened out. I could have at least said good-bye.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me. If I’d been in your shoes, I’d have melted my sneakers running—flat-out flying—out of there.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “No.”

  “Anybody know anything? I mean, any clues?”

  “Not that I know of but then Sheriff Shaw wouldn’t tell me no matter what.”

  “Yes, I guess. He has to be careful. Well, I hope you feel better. I’ll see you in the P.O. tomorrow.”

  “You bet.” Harry hung up the tackroom phone.

  She and Fair finished the barn chores and had decided to strip all the stalls to fill in the low spots and places where the horses had dug out.

  “You need rubber mats or Equistall.” Fair rolled in a wheelbarrow of black sand mixed with loam.

  “Equistall costs me four hundred and fifty dollars a stall.”

  “It is expensive. Our alfalfa cube experiment was a big success.”

  “So far. I’ve been able to cut back on my feed bill but everyone’s getting good nutrition. Maybe a little too much,” she laughed, as she indicated Tomahawk in the paddock.

  “If he were a man that’d be a beer belly.” Fair shoveled the sand into the stall. “Tracy was up early this morning. At least their reunion is a smashing success. They’re meeting for breakfast in the cafeteria.”

  “Chris sure wanted to know everything. Maybe I’m being suspicious. I guess it’s natural since she and Denny have been pretty close. Right now I—” A car motor diverted her attention.

  “Who goes!” Tucker barked, running out of the barn.

  Pewter and Mrs. Murphy, sitting in the hayloft, saw BoomBoom’s Beemer roll down the dusty drive.

  “Wonder what she wants?” Mrs. Murphy said.

  “Fair,” Pewter sarcastically replied.

  “We’ll soon find out.” The tiger cat tiptoed to the edge of the hayloft. She stayed still as she peered down into the center aisle.

  Once BoomBoom parked her car and got out, Pewter joined her.

  “Harry!” BoomBoom called out.

  “In here,” came the reply.

  BoomBoom walked into the barn, saw Harry in the aisle, and then noticed Fair as he stepped out of the stall. Her expression changed slightly. “Oh, hello.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Has Bob Shoaf come by?”

  “No. Why would he?” Harry said.

  “I thought he might stop off to say good-bye before flying back up north. He always liked you.”

  “BoomBoom, I don’t believe a word of this. What’s wrong?” Harry leaned her rake against the stall door.

  Her voice shot up half an octave. “I wanted to say good-bye myself, really.”

  “Why don’t I go inside or why don’t you two go inside? Maybe you can have this discussion without me.” Fair tossed a shovelful of the sand mix into a stall.

  “Uh . . . yes.” BoomBoom backed out of the barn.

  Mrs. Murphy and Pewter climbed down backwards from the ladder to the hayloft. They followed the two women, who stopped at the BMW.

  BoomBoom, voice lowered, said, “He left without saying anything. I thought if he was still around I’d find out what was the matter.”

  “He’s a jock, Boom. He’s used to being fawned over and getting what he wants. As long as he didn’t leave money on your dresser, I wouldn’t worry.” Harry immediately guessed what really happened.

  BoomBoom’s face flushed. “Harry, you have the most off-putting way of speaking sometimes.” She reached in her skirt pocket. “He left this, though.” A heavy, expensive Rolex gold watch gleamed in her hand.

  “That costs as much as my new truck.”

  “Yes, I think it does. I really ought to return the watch but I can’t send it to his house, now, can I?”

  “Ah. . . . ?” Harry had forgotten about Bob’s perfect wife and two perfect children. She to
ok the watch from BoomBoom’s palm. Nine-fifteen. She checked the old Hamilton she wore, her father’s watch. Nine-fifteen.