Pawing Through the Past (24 page)

53

Coop, alone in her squad car, rolled by the post office at five in the afternoon. She knocked, then came through the back door.

“More black clouds piling up by the mountains. The storm will blow the leaves off the trees by sundown.” She bent down to scratch Tucker’s ears. “I hate that. The color has been spectacular. One of the prettiest falls I remember.”

“Storm’s not here yet.” Harry tossed debris into a dark green garbage bag with yellow drawstrings. She looked at the bag. “Silly, but I hate going out to that dumpster.”

“Not so silly. Where’s Miranda?”

“Next door. She ran over to get half-and-half for her coffee.” Diet or no diet, Miranda would not give up her half-and-half.

“Weird.”

“What?”

“It’s so quiet. This is the last place I would expect it to be quiet.”

“Wasn’t this morning. Half the town dragged themselves in before ten o’clock but the media attention finally irritated them. What’s so unusual is, there’s no fear unless it’s one of my classmates. Oh, people are upset, outraged, full of ideas, but not afraid.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Harry replied without hesitation. “I’d be a fool not to be. I scan each face that comes through that door and wonder, ‘Is he the one?’ I scan each face and wonder which one is scanning mine.” She sighed. “At least we haven’t gotten any more stupid mailings. That seems to be the signal.”

“Any unusual conversations, I mean, did anyone call attention to your voice?”

“Every single person who came in. Chris Sharpton wanted to take me to Larry Johnson to have him examine my throat. She was the only one who wanted to get a medical opinion. Big Mim suggested a hot toddy after taking echinacea. Little Mim said pills, shots, nothing works. It has to run through my system. Most comments were of that nature. Although, I must say that I was impressed with BoomBoom. She hasn’t spilled the beans—’course, I guess she has a lot on her mind.”

“Indeed . . . but Boom has sense underneath all that fluff. She’s not going to willingly jeopardize you.”

“Fair calls every half hour. He’s driven by four times. I’m sure his patients are thrilled.”

Coop laughed. “Fortunately, they can’t complain.”

“No, but their owners can.” Harry tied up the bag, setting it by the back door. “Any sign of Dennis Rablan?”

“Not a hair. We’ve checked plane departures, the train, the bus. His van hasn’t turned up either.”

“Coop, he could be dead.”

“That thought has occurred to me.” Cynthia sat down at the table, licked her forefinger, and picked up crumbs.

“You eat like a bird.” Harry opened the small refrigerator, bringing out two buttermilk biscuits that were left. “Here. Miranda’s concoction for today.”

Just then Mrs. H. walked through the front door; the large brown bag in her arms testified to the fact that she had bought more than a container of half-and-half. “Cynthia, how are you?”

“Frustrated.”

“And hungry. She’s been picking the crumbs up off the table.”

“I can take care of that.” Miranda lifted a huge sandwich from the bag. “You girls can share. I got a salad for me, but if you prefer that, Cynthia, I can divide it.” Cynthia said she’d like half of Harry’s sandwich. Miranda cut the turkey, bacon, lettuce, and provolone on whole wheat in half.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Harry smiled at Cynthia. “You’re saving me from making a pig of myself.”

Chris Sharpton pulled up, stuck her head in the front door. “Did you go to the doctor?”

“Miranda took me,” Harry lied.

“And?”

“Laryngitis. He said the red mark isn’t anything to worry about. I bruised myself but I can’t remember how.”

“You take care.” Chris waved to the others, shut the door, and drove off.

As Cynthia gratefully ate, Miranda put a steaming cup of coffee before her, half coffee, half cream, with a twist of tiny orange rind, a favorite drink.

“If you have any leftovers, I’d be glad to eat them.”
Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail.

“Pig,”
was all Mrs. Murphy said. Her worry soured her usually buoyant spirits.

Pewter had eaten two biscuits earlier. She was full as a tick.
“Murphy, would it do us any good to walk up to the high school? Maybe we’ve missed something.”

“The only thing we’ve missed is the boiler room and the janitor’s been in there today. Besides, all the kids are back in school. No scent. I’m at a loss, Pewter. I have not one good plan of action. I don’t even know where to start.”

Tucker, hearing this dispiriting talk, said,
“We can read Harry’s yearbook tonight. Maybe that will guide us.”

“I’ll try anything.”
Murphy flopped down on her side, putting her head on her outstretched arm. She felt so bad it made her tired.

“Dennis?” was all Mrs. Hogendobber asked Cynthia.

“Vanished. I was telling Harry. His landlord opened the office and lab. We crawled all over it. We took a locksmith to his house. Nothing has been disturbed and he hasn’t been back. Luckily, he doesn’t have pets but his plants are wilting. His neighbors haven’t seen him. The state police haven’t seen him on the highway.”

Cynthia sipped her coffee. “You think it was Dennis?”

“He’s the only one left standing,” Miranda replied.

“Hank Bittner,” Harry reminded her. “Lucky him. He’s back in New York.”

“The killer had no opportunities to nail Hank,” Cynthia said. “At least, I don’t think he did.”

Harry poured herself a cup of tea, putting a small orange rind in it, too. She couldn’t drink coffee. Made her too jumpy. “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Rex Harnett was killed in the bathroom. He wasn’t dragged there. I wasn’t keeping track of when the men went to the loo but our killer was probably in there or saw Rex in there and followed him. He worked fast. How he got out without anyone seeing him makes me think he crawled through the window. After all, the bathroom is on the first floor. And he was prepared for any opportunity. It’s frightening how clever and fearless he is.”

“You’re right about him crawling through the bathroom window.” Cynthia confirmed Harry’s thesis.

“You could have told us.”
Mrs. Murphy was miffed.

As if in reply to the cat, Cynthia said, “We can’t tell you everything. Well, Boss worries more than I do. I know neither of you did it. Anyway, yes, he dropped on the other side, maybe a six-foot drop. The grass wasn’t torn up, no clear prints, obviously, but the ground was slightly indented. He dropped over, brushed himself off, hid the gun somewhere, and strolled back into the gym.”

“Wish we knew if he came back in before or after Dennis found Rex.”

“Harry, Dennis could have done it, walked around, gone into the bathroom, and discovered the body. It would throw people off.” Miranda tapped the end of her knife on the table, a counterpoint to her words.

“Why didn’t you arrest him?” Harry asked Cynthia.

“Not enough proof. But Harry, go back to Hank Bittner. You said the killer didn’t have an opportunity to kill Hank if he was an intended victim.”

“Remember when Hank asked you if he could go to the bathroom?”

“Yes. I made him wait.”

“And he did. If the killer hadn’t been in the gym with us, if he’d been upstairs, or outside or in the basement, he might have known Hank was alone. Well, probably not in the basement. But from upstairs he could have listened to the sounds coming up from the hall.” She held up her hand. “A long shot. Still, he might have known. If he was in the gym with us, he couldn’t follow anyone anywhere. You had us all pinned down. You had secured the bathroom where Rex was killed. Your men were out in the parking lot. You’d checked out the building and the grounds while we were penned up, right? I mean, that’s why you wouldn’t let Hank go to the bathroom. Not until your guys were done.”

“You know, Harry, you’re smart. Sometimes, I forget that.”

“The killer knew what was going on while we sat there. And he’s smarter than we are. Now it’s possible he could have run away after killing Rex and come back later. But I don’t think so. You would have known. You had that school covered.”

“Yes, we did.”

“All right. Later we had our dinner. Dennis makes a perfect ass of himself and leaves. You knew that, too. And I’m thinking Dennis’s behavior was part of a plan.”

“You’re right. We had a man on the roof of the grade school across the street and we had a man in the parking lot in Tracy Raz’s car. We had another officer tail him, although he lost him.”

“So he could have come back. He could have snuck up behind the school.”

“It’s possible,” she agreed. “But your cats and dog ran out the back of the school. The dog barked and that alerted our man in Tracy’s car. Unfortunately, he didn’t put two and two together fast enough, but then he doesn’t really know your animals as I do. By the time he roused himself, all he knew was that someone had run across the lawn.”

“Dennis could have come back.” Miranda stuck to her guns.

“It is possible but when we sent cars out to look for his van, it was nowhere to be found on any of the roads around here.”

“He could have pulled off on a dirt road,” Miranda said, “or he could have used someone else’s car or a closed garage.”

“Yes.” Cynthia put down her cup.

“When I started up the stairwell, he was waiting. I think he was waiting for Hank. He knew Dennis had left—that is, if it wasn’t Dennis. He wanted the reunion to be his killing field—he set us up with Charlie and Leo. They were the overture. The reunion was going to be the big show. I swear it! And I got in the way.”

“But the class of 1950 was in the cafeteria, that’s what galls me.” Miranda smacked her hand on the table. “Right there. He was over our heads and we never heard him. Nor did we see him come in and we may be old but we aren’t blind.”

“He never left,” Harry said. “He may have gotten in his car when everyone drove away but he just circled around and hid his car. He’d been up there for hours. I can’t prove it but it makes sense. You had the building covered. And even if you’d walked the halls, there are plenty of places to hide: broom closets, bathrooms. He could have stood on the john. You wouldn’t have seen him. I tell you, he was there all the time.”

“And you believe that he was going to kill Hank Bittner.” Cynthia started to rise but Miranda jumped up and refilled her cup, handing her the half-and-half.

“If the stories are true then there are two witnesses or . . . participants alive from that rape.” Harry thought out loud. “If Hank Bittner had been killed and Dennis lived, I guess we’d have our answer.” She stopped abruptly. “Dennis has a car phone. Has he used it?”

“No. We checked that, too.”

“And you’ve called Hank Bittner, of course,” Miranda pressed.

“We did. He left on the six forty-five
A.M
. flight for New York and showed up for work. We called again this afternoon to see if anyone from the class had called him. Nobody had. He didn’t seem frightened but that could be a bluff.”

“What if you bring him back to flush the game?”

“No go. He’s not coming back to Crozet until we find the killer.”

“Doesn’t mean the killer won’t go to him.” Harry folded her arms across her chest. “Another thing. The gun that killed Rex and Bob. A different gun than Marcy Wiggins’?”

“Yes.”

“With a silencer?”

“Exactly.”

“They’re illegal,” Miranda exclaimed.

“So is murder,” Harry said, and then they burst out laughing, relieving some of the tension.

54

That evening, Tracy Raz and Fair took turns staying awake while Harry slept. Pewter again stayed in the bedroom with Harry while Tucker rested by the kitchen door and Mrs. Murphy curled up at the front door.

At one in the morning Mrs. Murphy opened one eye. She heard the crunch of tires about a half mile away. Had she been wide awake she would have heard it earlier. With lightning speed she skidded down the hallway, turned through the living room, and soared through the kitchen, leaping over Tucker’s head. The corgi, eyes now opened wide, shot through the animal door after Mrs. Murphy. The two best friends ran under the three-board fence, down over the sloping meadow, jumped a ditch and culvert, zigzagged through the protective fringe of woods by the front entrance, and came out on the paved road in time to see the taillights of a late-model car recede in the darkness.

“Damn!”
Tucker shook herself.

“Make that a double damn. Even a minute earlier, we might have identified the car. You can bet it wasn’t someone lost and turning around. No, that was our killer all right. Coming down the driveway. Saw Tracy’s car and Fair’s truck.”

They turned, trotting over the light silvery frost covering the ground. The storm clouds still gathered at the mountaintops. The weather in the mountains varies from minute to minute. Although it appeared in the afternoon that a storm would hit by early evening, it waited. When the winds changed, those inky masses would roll down into the valley. Deer, raccoons, fox, and rabbits scampered about, each hoping to fill their bellies before the storm pinned them down.

As the cat and dog broke into the open meadow, a low
swoosh
flattened them to the ground. Mrs. Murphy twisted her head to look upward. A pair of huge talons, wide open, reached for her.

“Ha! Ha!”
Flatface called as she brushed the edge of Mrs. Murphy’s fur. Then she rose again in the dark air.

“She’s got a sick sense of humor,”
Tucker, rattled, growled.

“Flatface. Flatface. Come back,”
Mrs. Murphy called out to the enormous owl.

Huge shadowy wings dipped, the owl banked, then silently settled before them. Rarely were the ground animals this close to the owl, easily three times taller than they were, with a massive chest and fearsome golden eyes. When they spoke to her or were reprimanded by her, she was usually in her perch in the cupola in the barn.

Speechless for a moment, Tucker swallowed.
“You scared us.”

“Groundlings,”
came the imperious reply.

“Did you see the car that drove partways down the drive?”
Mrs. Murphy refused to back up even though Flatface took a step toward her, turning her head upside down for effect.

“Wasn’t a car. It was a van. It flashed the lights on when it turned into the driveway, then cut them off. Drove down the road with no lights. Fool.”

“Did you see who was driving it?”
Murphy asked.

“No.”

“We think whoever is driving that van, most likely Dennis Rablan, will try to kill Mom,”
Tucker, ears forward, said.

“Humans don’t concern me.”

“She’s different.”
Murphy puffed out her fur a bit.

Flatface swiveled her head around; a field mouse moved under the dried hay leavings. Full, she let the tiny creature pass.
“If you were a kitten I’d eat you for supper.”
She let out a low chortle, then stretched her wings out wide, a sight that would have frozen the blood even of the forty-pound bobcat who prowled this territory. To further emphasize her power she stepped forward, towering over the cat and dog.

Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“Have to catch me first. Maybe I’d put pepper on my tail.”

Flatface folded her wings next to her body. She admired the sleek tiger cat’s nerve.
“As I said, I don’t care about humans but I like the barn. New people might change the routine. One never knows. Then again, Harry seems less human than most of them. I shouldn’t like to see her killed.”

“If you see anything or if that van returns, fly down and see who is driving it. We think it’s Dennis Rablan.”
Tucker finally spoke up.

“All right.”

The wind shifted. Mrs. Murphy beheld the first inky octopus leg of the storm slide down the mountain.
“Have you had any luck catching any of the barn mice?”

The owl blinked.
“No—and they sing the most awful songs.”

“Ah, it isn’t just me then.”
Murphy smiled.

Flatface hooted, opened her wings, and lifted off over their heads, a rush of air from her large wings flowing over their faces as the wind from the west picked up.

By the time they reached the screened-in porch, the first tiny ratshot of sleet slashed out of the sky. It hit the tin roof of the barn like machine-gun fire. Within seconds the
rat-tat-tat
increased to a steady roar.

“Will be a hard night of it.”
Murphy shook herself, as did Tucker.

“Wonder where he hides that van?”
Tucker shook the sleet off her fur.

“Right under our noses.”

“Do you believe Pewter slept through everything?”
Tucker was appalled.

“Tracy’s wide awake.”
Murphy watched as the older man pored over Harry’s high-school yearbook.

“If this is Dennis, he knows that Tracy is our lodger. He doesn’t take him seriously. I think it was Fair’s truck that backed him off.”

“Maybe he was checking us out for later.”