Pawing Through the Past (20 page)

43

Harry had no sooner walked through the kitchen door than the phone rang.

“Hello,” Fair said. “I’m at the clinic but I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I’m fine. I’ll meet you at school for supper. Don’t worry.” She hung up the phone and it rang again.

“Hey,” Susan said. “I dropped off two English boxwoods for Chris. I feel guilty. She’s not coming to the dinner tonight, obviously. She was funny, though. She said if we survived our reunion she’d love to play golf next weekend. Oh, she’s through with Dennis, too. Said she’s shocked at the way he behaved. That’s what really upset her.”

“Well—good for her. Did you think of anything for Bitsy? It’s really E.R.’s responsibility to thank her for her work but, well, I liked working with her.”

“The full treatment at Vendome.” Susan mentioned the most exclusive beauty parlor in town, where one could have a haircut, massage, waxing, manicure, pedicure, and complete makeover, emerging rejuvenated.

“That’s a good idea. We’ll get BoomBoom to cough up the money. Those two worked as hard on our reunion as we did.”

“I paid for the boxwoods. It was my bet. If Boom won’t pay for Vendome, I’ll do it. It’s only right.”

“I’ll split it with you.”

“No, you won’t. You put away that money you’re getting on rent.”

“I guess Tracy will leave after his reunion. He hasn’t said anything. I’ll tell you, though, his rent money has made my life easier.”

“You’re the truck queen of Crozet.” Susan laughed, since she knew the rent money went to pay for the truck.

“Susan, are you scared?”

“About the dinner?” They’d known one another since in-fancy so elaborate explanations weren’t needed, nor were transitions between subjects.

“Yeah.”

“No. I’ll have Ned with me. Also, I don’t think we’re involved except as bystanders.”

“There won’t be that many people there. I wonder if the killer will attend? And I wonder if we’re doing the right thing. We haven’t even had time to process Rex’s murder. I feel like we’re being whittled away.”

“Are you scared?” Susan asked.

“Yes. I’m not afraid I’ll get bumped off. I’m afraid of what I’ll feel.”

“Blindsided.” Susan referred to the manner in which emotions flatten a person.

“You, too?”

A long pause followed. “Yes. I joked about who was that young person in the Best All-Round photograph but I meant it. And then I look at Danny and Brooks.” She referred to her son and daughter. “And I realize they’re feeling all the same emotions and confusions we did but in a different time. I’m beginning to believe that the human story is the same story over and over again, only the sets change.”

“A in History,” Harry laughed.

Susan thought back on her A’s in History and just about everything else. “The difference is that I understand it now—before, I just knew it.”

“Can you understand the murders?”

“No. I don’t even know what to call the way I feel. Intense . . . disturbed? No, I don’t understand it and I don’t remember anything that horrible from high school. I mean, nothing out of the ordinary like two people hating one another so much it lasts for twenty years. But we’re in the dark. Even Market seems to know something we don’t, and Dennis—good Lord.”

“Think Denny Rablan will show his face?”

“He doesn’t dare.”

44

Denny sat there as big as life and twice as smug. No one wanted to sit next to him. Finally Harry did, only because Susan had put out the exact number of chairs based on the head count. The sheer quantity of food overwhelmed the tables: spicy chicken wings, corn bread, perfectly roasted beef with a thin pepper crust, moist Virginia ham cooked to perfection, biscuits, shrimp remoulade, a mustard-based sauce for the beef, sweet potatoes candied and shining orange. Three different kinds of salad satisfied those who didn’t wish such heavy foods. The women sat down, claiming they’d stick to the salads. That lasted five minutes.

The desserts, reposing on a distant table, beckoned after the main course. Carrot cake, tiny, high-impact brownies, fruit compote, luxurious cheeses from Denmark, England, and France rested among heaps of pale green grapes. If that wasn’t enough, a thin, dense fruitcake with hard sauce filled out the menu.

The bar was open, which somewhat raised the conversation level.

The thirty-one people who came to the dinner ate themselves into a stupor. Mike Alvarez did not return. His wife had put her foot down but he left the tapes for everyone to enjoy, if “enjoy” was the right word. During dinner BoomBoom played the slow tapes. “Digestion tapes,” she called them.

Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker ate from paper plates on the floor under the table. Since there was so much food, Harry didn’t think anyone would begrudge her animals.

Fair sat on the other side of Harry, her left side. Hank Bittner refused to sit next to Dennis even though he came in late and seats were taken. Bonnie Baltier switched seats with Hank so she sat on the other side of Dennis.

“Anything turn up in the lab?” Bonnie asked Dennis as her fork cut into the steaming sweet potato.

“No. Rick Shaw took the pictures and left. He said he had suspects but they always say that. I just said, ‘Yeah, the whole class.’”

“Is there a digital time frame on the photographs?”

Dennis answered Harry. “No. I’m using a Nikon that’s thirty years old. Never found a camera I liked better.”

“Oh.” Harry returned to her dinner.

Miranda and Tracy ducked their heads in the open doors. Susan waved them in. Harry hadn’t seen them.

“Miranda, you look stunning.” Fair stood up to compliment her.

“Sit down, sit down. I’ll spoil your dinner.” She blushed.

“She’s the belle of the ball.” Tracy beamed. “Doesn’t that emerald green dress set off her hair and her eyes?”

“Yes,” they agreed.

“Mrs. Hogendobber, come down to the studio in that outfit. I’ll take a picture—for free. I should have my camera with me but I forgot it.”

“You’ve,” Miranda paused, “been discombobulated.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, you should be a diplomat,” Hank Bittner laughed. “And you do look lovely. If the women look as good as you do when we have our fiftieth reunion, I’ll be a happy man.”

“You men will turn my head.” She blushed some more as Tracy winked at the men.

“Come on, beautiful. I don’t trust these guys.” Tracy gently put his hand in the small of her back, guiding her out of the room.

Susan, on her way for second helpings, swooped past Harry. “Are they getting serious or what? She really does look fabulous. That treadmill has worked wonders.”

“Tracy has worked wonders.” Fair smiled. “It’s a magic that never fails.” He turned to Harry and whispered, “You’ll always be magic to me, Sweetheart.”

Harry blushed and mumbled, “Thanks.”

BoomBoom raised her glass. “Here’s to the class of 1980!”

The group hesitated, then raised their glasses. “Hear. Hear.”

“What’s left of us.” Dennis held up his glass for a second toast.

“Rablan, shut up.” Bittner stood and held up his glass. “To the organizers for their hard work and their heart when things didn’t turn out quite as they—or any of us—expected.”

Everyone cheered.

“I don’t remember Hank being so eloquent,” Fair remarked.

“He learned somewhere along the way.” Bonnie leaned over Dennis. “Brightwood Records wouldn’t promote an unpolished stone. I’d kill to have his stock options.”

“You’d have to,” Dennis laughed.

“You haven’t exactly made a fortune. In fact, you lost one,” Bonnie replied.

“You’re right.” He shut up.

The cats and Tucker decided to walk under the tables. This was a stroll, not a search for crumbs. They’d eaten too much.

“Hee hee.”
Pewter nudged Mrs. Murphy as she watched a lady, heels off, run her foot over a man’s calf. He wore charcoal pants.

Mrs. Murphy popped her head from under the tablecloth.
“BoomBoom.”

Pewter ducked out on the other side.
“Bob Shoaf.”

“Figures,”
Murphy said as she walked back under the table-cloth.

“He’s married, isn’t he?”
Tucker could have told them it was BoomBoom since Tucker paid a lot of attention to shoes and smells.

“Yes. He left the Mrs. at home, though,”
Pewter said.

Bored with their stroll, the animals emerged by the food tables.

“I could probably eat one more piece of beef.”
Tucker gazed upward.

“Don’t. You’ve stuffed yourself. If you eat too much you’ll get sick on the way home,”
Mrs. Murphy counseled.

Their conversation didn’t finish because an explosion from Bonnie Baltier sent them back to that table.

“What are you talking about?” She slammed her hand on the table, making the plates jump.

“I thought you knew.” Dennis blinked.

Hank leaned over Bonnie. “None of the women knew, you asshole!”

Bonnie stood up, walked around Dennis to Harry. “Did you know about a gang rape on the day senior superlatives were voted?”

“No.” Harry gasped as did Susan.

“Is it true?” Bonnie, very upset, turned on Dennis. “It must be true. Why would anyone make something like that up!”

Bob Shoaf stopped playing footsies with BoomBoom. His eyes narrowed, he pushed back his seat as he strode over to Dennis, towering above him. “Rablan, there’s something wrong with you. I’d call you a worm but that would insult worms.” He bent over, menacing, as Fair rose from his seat just in case. “I don’t know why you’re making up this story about Ron Brindell getting raped in the showers but I do know that you were the person who found Rex Harnett dead and no one else was in the men’s room. Do you think we’re that stupid!”

Dennis, shaking with rage, stood up, facing off with Bob. “I’m not making it up. I wish I’d done something at the time. I felt guilty then and I feel guilty now.”

Bob reached for Dennis’s neck but Fair grabbed Bob’s arms. Bob Shoaf had been a great pro football player but Fair Haristeen was a six-foot-four working equine vet. He was strong and he had one advantage: his knees still worked.

“You aren’t going to listen to him! He’s guilty and the sheriff is waiting for him to make a mistake,” Bob exploded.

“Why would I kill Charlie Ashcraft and Leo Burkey?” Dennis became oddly calm.

“You tell me,” Shoaf taunted. “It’s like your story about knowing who Charlie Ashcraft knocked up. You don’t know anything. You say these things to make yourself important. You don’t know shit.”

“I do. You know I do.”

By now Hank Bittner was on his feet. Everyone else was watching.

“Then who’s the mother?” Bob stepped back, already dismissing Dennis.

“Olivia Ulrich,” Dennis loudly said.

“I am not!” BoomBoom flew out of her chair. “You liar. I am not.”

“Come on, Boom. You loved his ass,” Dennis mocked.

Susan, now at Harry’s side, said, “I don’t recall Dennis being this snide.”

“Me neither. Something’s sure brought it out of him.”

“Fear,”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“If he was afraid he should have stayed home.”
Pewter moved farther away from the humans in case another fight broke out.

“Maybe he’s safer here than at home,”
Tucker sagely noted.
“He has no family. All alone. The killer might not want to slit his throat but there are a few people here who wouldn’t mind. If I were Dennis, I’d rent a motel room for a couple of nights.”

“Or maybe he has to be here,”
Murphy shrewdly said.

BoomBoom, shaking, pointed her finger in Dennis’s face. “Because I’d never go to bed with you—this is your revenge. You waited twenty years for this. My God, you’re pathetic.”

“But you did have an illegitimate child.”

“I did not and you can’t prove it.”

“You know, I take class pictures for the schools in town. And I recall a beautiful girl who graduated three years ago who had your coloring but Charlie’s looks. Western Albemarle. You gave that girl up for adoption.”

“Never! I would never do that.” BoomBoom was so furious she couldn’t move. She had never before felt a paralyzing rage.

“Boom, don’t try to pull the wool over our eyes. You don’t care about the consequences. You never did. You steal people’s husbands.” Dennis looked at Harry when he said that. “You dump inconvenient children. Why, if Kelly Craycroft had known about the girl he’d have never married you. You wanted his money.”

“I married Kelly Craycroft after I graduated from college. Do you think I was thinking about marrying money in high school? You’re out of your mind.”

“Think it’s true?”
Pewter asked Murphy.

“I don’t know.”

“And furthermore, I didn’t steal anybody’s husband. They aren’t wallets. You can’t just pick them up, you know.” She put her hands on her hips. “As for the rest of you, I know what you think. The hell with you. I do as I please. Ladies, virtue is greatly over-rated!”

Harry whistled. “At long last, the real BoomBoom!”

BoomBoom stalked out of the room with Bob Shoaf following after her, reaching to slow her down.

Hank Bittner sat back down, calling over his shoulder, “Dennis, Rex may be physically dead, but buddy, you’re dead socially.”

Everyone started talking at once.

Mrs. Murphy watched Dennis sit down next to Hank. She hurried over to hear the conversation since there was so much noise.

“You’re an even bigger coward than I am, Bittner. I just figured it out. Sheriff Shaw said something to me today. He said if these murders are revenge for Ron Brindell’s rape then someone who loved Ron has to be committing them. He said what if Ron had a lover, another high-school boy that no one knew about. The boy stood back and didn’t stop the rape. He didn’t want anyone to know he was gay. He never lifted a finger to help Ron. And no one ever suspected. That was you.”

Hank deliberately put down his fork, turned to Dennis, and said softly, “Dennis, if I were gay I would like to think I would have the courage to be what I am. I would like to think I would have fought for Ron. But I’m not gay. It wasn’t me and I don’t know what’s wrong with you—unless that coward is
you
.”