Pawing Through the Past (21 page)

45

Sheriff Shaw had taken the precaution of having Dennis Rablan tailed to the reunion dinner. He also had a plainclothes officer watching Dennis’s house in Bentivar, a subdivision up Route 29.

He’d pinned another flow chart to the long bulletin board in the hallway. The interior of the school was neatly drawn. Exits and entrances were outlined in red, as was each window.

Cynthia Cooper was to have attended the dinner but Rick changed his mind: he thought her presence might inhibit people. Little could have inhibited that group, though, and Coop hoped Harry and Susan would save the leftovers. She beseeched them to bring a lot of Ziploc bags and containers.

“You think the killer will crack?”

“It’s his or her big night, isn’t it? Whoever it is has waited twenty years.”

“Are you expecting someone to be blown up in the parking lot?”

He shot her a sharp glance. “I wouldn’t put it past our perp.”

“I think he’s enjoying the chaos—and the fear in the eyes of whoever is left on his list. I think he’s sitting in that gym loving every second of it.”

“Wish we knew more about Brindell. His parents have passed away. His cousin was no help and snotty, to boot. There’s got to be somebody who can tell us who his boyfriend was—or girlfriend. One of the girls could have loved him even if he was gay. People don’t have much control over love. Mim Sanburne is proof of that.” He smiled because the Queen of Crozet had married beneath her, although everyone conceded that Jim Sanburne, in his youth, was one sexy man.

“This is what bothers me.” Cynthia, suddenly intense, stubbed out her lit cigarette. “The killer knows we know this is the big weekend. He knows we’re expecting another incident at the dinner or right after since they canceled the dance. He knows,” she repeated for emphasis. “Is he going to risk it? He knocked off two this summer. He’s killed this morning. He might just wait, enjoy the panic, then strike when it suits him. Whoever he or she is—this lover or best friend—he’s fooled us.”

“You don’t buy that it’s Dennis Rablan. He had access to everyone. Not much in the way of alibis but then we’ve both seen ironclad alibis suddenly get produced in the courtroom, along with the expensive lawyer.” The sheriff rubbed his chin, opened his drawer, pulling out a cordless electric razor.

“Boss, do that in the car. Let’s go over there.”

“Jason’s in the parking lot.”

“Like a neon sign.”

“What are we, then?”

“I don’t know but I think we ought to—” The phone rang, interrupting her.

“Sheriff Shaw,” Rick answered as the operator put the call through. “Well, stay with him.” He hung the phone up. “Jason says Dennis Rablan ran out of the high school, fired up his van, and is pulling out of the parking lot.”

“Jason can stay with Dennis. Let’s go to Crozet High.”

“I hope so.”

46

“Jesus, what a mess.” Harry watched as the reunion dinner fell apart. “We might as well clean up and go home.”

“Yeah.” Susan, also dejected, picked up the plates, depositing them in huge trash bags. “One good thing, they ate more than I thought they would. We’ll have a lot to take home but at least people enjoyed the food.”

Fair stayed behind, as did Hank Bittner, Bonnie Baltier, Market Shiflett, and Linda Osterhoudt. Within an hour and a half the place looked as though they’d never been in it. The huge senior superlative photographs easily came down. Market rolled them up, placing them in large tubes.

“You might as well throw those out,” Fair told him.

“Maybe our thirtieth reunion will be better. Anyway, there’s plenty of space in the attic of the store. Who knows, huh?”

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, tired from the rich food and the human fuss, sat down under the raised basketball backboard.

“Guess that’s it.” Harry put her hands on her hips, surveying the polished gym floor. “Too bad we couldn’t have had the dance. Alvarez made serious tapes. He was always good at that kind of stuff.”

“His wife sure tells him what to do,” Hank Bittner laughed. “I thought he might sneak back to the dinner.”

“She probably dragged him to Monticello. That’s what all the out-of-towners want to see.” Susan pressed her hand to the small of her back. All the bending over and lifting had made her ache a little. “I hate to see our reunion end this way.”

“Yeah,” the others agreed.

Harry asked Hank, “Do you believe the story about Bob, Rex, Charlie, and Leo attacking Ron?”

“Yes,” Hank replied.

“Was Dennis there?” Harry continued her inquiry.

“I think he was. I think he stood by the door to watch out for Coach. I can’t prove any of it but I believe it.”

“How did you hear about it?” Fair asked.

“Ron told me,” Hank said, looking truly sorrowful.

“Why didn’t you go to the principal or Coach or somebody?” Harry blurted out. She didn’t want to sound accusatory but she did.

“Because Ron said he would deny what happened. He didn’t want anyone to know. He especially didn’t want Deborah Kingsmill to know. He was taking her to the Christmas dance. He thought she’d break the date if she knew.” Hank paused. “And if he’d told, who knows what they would have done to him. There was a kind of wisdom to his silence.”

“If she really cared about him, she’d go anyway,” Susan said.

“Not Deborah.” Hank half-smiled. “She didn’t care about anybody—which made the guys want her. And remember, she was a cheerleader and all that crap. Even then, her ambition made her cold. Ron felt like he was, I don’t know, moving up, I guess, having a date with her.”

“Did you know he was gay?” Harry wondered.

“Kinda.” Hank shrugged. “What do you know at that age? I’m not sure even Ron knew. I do know that Leo, Charlie, Bob, and Rex spent the rest of the year teasing him but they weren’t violent again.”

“Maybe Dennis was his boyfriend?” Fair stooped over to pick up a carton loaded with food. He was going to start carrying food and drinks out to his truck, Harry’s truck, and Susan’s car.

“He’s got two kids and one ex-wife,” Susan said.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not gay.” Hank also bent over to pick up a carton. “Hell, I’ve been married and divorced three times—to the same woman. That doesn’t mean I’m nuts.”

“Hank, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.” Fair smiled as the men walked out of the gym.

“I’m going home. Thanks for the food, Susan.” Bonnie kissed Susan on the cheek.

“Drive safely.” Susan kissed her back. “That ninety miles can get truly boring.”

“Back to Washington.” Linda Osterhoudt did her round of kisses. “Call me when you come up. The opera this year is worth the trip.”

“We will,” Susan and Harry said. “Hey, why don’t you let the guys carry that out for you?”

“I’m not taking that much home.” She lifted her small carton and left.

Market came back in for more tubes. Subdued, he waved and left.

Harry and Susan sighed simultaneously.

“It’s a bitch,” Harry exhaled.

“Yeah. I understand revenge. But why wreck the reunion for everyone else?”

“Guess your mind warps after a while. Hey, Boom let us all have it, didn’t she? And you know, she’s right. It’s her body. A husband isn’t a purse. You can’t snatch him unless he wants to be snatched. I give her credit for fighting back.”

“You’re mellow.”

Harry clapped her hands together for the animals. “Sick of it. Not mellow. I’m sick of being angry at her, angry at him, angry at me. Done is done. Took me a long enough time to get there, though. In a strange way this reunion has helped me.”

“I’d like to know how?” Susan asked, genuinely interested.

“I’ve had ample proof of what carrying around anger, hate, and the desire for revenge can do to somebody—whoever that somebody is. So he’s winning. Winning what? His life is reduced to this one issue, a very great pain, a terrible wound and it would seem an equally terrible act of cowardice. But life moves on. Our killer didn’t. In my own little way, I don’t want to be like that.” She smiled as the three animals trotted toward her. “I’ve seen enough embittered women not to want to become one.”

Susan hugged Harry fiercely. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. I couldn’t ask for a better friend.”

The two women stood there with tears in their eyes.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a bad reunion after all.” Susan wiped away her tears and Harry’s, too. “Shall we?”

They bent over to pick up two cartons and walked out the door. Harry paused for a moment to look back, then cut the lights. “Good-bye, class of 1980.”

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter dashed ahead of the humans, turned a few very pretty kitty circles, and waited at the door. Tucker barked at the door; she’d barreled on ahead of them.

Harry put her carton down for a second. The faint sounds of fifties music wafted down the hall from the cafeteria. She wanted to stick her head in and watch but thought better of it. Hank came back in for another carton.

“Should we dance?” He nodded toward the music.

“No. It’s their night.”

“Well, I’m not flying back to New York until Monday. If you change your mind about dancing, call me.” He winked, picked up Harry’s carton, and headed for the door. Harry turned to follow but thought she heard a sound on the stairwell.

The lights were out in the stairwell. She walked up a step and went over to turn them on to double-check.

A black-gloved hand came down over hers.

A man’s tenor, a familiar voice, snarled, “Don’t, you idiot!”

Before she could respond he drew back the side of his hand and hit her hard in the windpipe. She staggered back, choking, falling off the one step. She saw briefly the back of a man, dressed in black, a black ski mask over his face as he jumped over her. Nimbly, he ran down the hall.

Tears of pain rolled down her face; she couldn’t get up. She was fighting hard to breathe.

Mrs. Murphy noticed first.
“Something’s wrong!”

The three animals tore back down the hallway, their paws barely touching the ground. They were all going so fast that when they reached Harry they spun out of control.

Harry, on her hands and knees, gasped for air. Tucker licked her face.

“I’ll catch him!”
Pewter took off down the hall. Once the humans saw Harry, Murphy ran after Pewter.

“Harry? Harry!” Susan came running toward Harry, the sound of footsteps receding, fading into the fifties music.

Murphy left Harry, hit Mach One, sped past Pewter, sped past the running man, ducked into the cafeteria, pushed out a skateboard from behind the door, and pushed it so it would cross the man’s path.

He never saw the skateboard. He hit it running flat out, fell down, and skidded on the polished floor. He struggled up and kept running, although his arm was crooked.

“Dennis Rablan! It’s Dennis Rablan!”
Murphy yelled, but only Pewter understood as she came alongside Murphy.

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.