Рита Браун - Pawing Through The Past

"Yep."

He stopped at the door. "Two footprints next to each other at the dumpster isn't much to go on. The Bean footprint is a man's, size eight and a half or nine. The heel footprint, well, we couldn't tell, since the toe would have been on a rock."

"Could have been a man and woman, side by side, heaving in Leo," Coop said. "He was a short, but stocky man. But then, some of the trash in there was heavier than cartons."

"Some memories are heavier than others, too." He opened the door. "I don't think it's coincidence that Charlie's death came now. And now Leo." He shrugged. "Gotta go."

26

Fair measured Poptart around the girth. He'd dropped by to see how Harry was doing after the shock. He glanced at last week's figures on the chart hanging outside each horse's stall.

Poptart quietly stood in the center aisle. The horse, a big girl, half-closed her eyes.

Mrs. Murphy, sitting on the tack trunk, asked, "Don't you ever get hungry for meat?"

"No."

"Not even an eensy piece?"

"Do you get hungry for timothy or for grain?" Poptart's large brown eyes focused on the tiger, now standing on her hind legs to touch noses with the large creature.

"No. You're right. I can't expect you to like what I like and vice versa."

"We like lots of the same things. Just not foods."

"You'll be surprised at how much less grain you'll need to feed her."

"I like my grain," Poptart protested.

"She's an easy keeper." Harry patted the gray neck. "I give her half a scoop, a couple of flakes of hay, plus she's got all that grass to eat."

Fair also patted Poptart on the neck, then led her out to the pasture behind the barn, where she kicked up her heels and joined Gin Fizz and Tomahawk, who had been measured before she had.

"How come you didn't tell me about Tracy Raz?"

"Fair, he just started renting here."

"Seems a good man."

"Miranda likes him. I've noticed she doesn't quote the Scriptures around him as much as she does around us."

Fair laughed as he leaned over the fence. Poptart bucked, twisted, and bucked some more.

They walked back to the house. The evening had begun to cool down. Tracy was calling on Big Mim. They sat in the kitchen together along with Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker.

"Sure you're okay?" He reached for her hand.

"Yes." She squeezed his offered hand. "It shocked the hell out of me. Both Mim and I about fell over."

"I would have about passed out myself."

"A dead body is bad enough but the"-she paused-"incongruity of it . . . that's what shocked me."

"It looks like this reunion might be, uh . . . eventful."

"Well, that's just it." She grew suddenly animated. "I don't remember anything from high school. I mean I don't remember some awful thing that would provoke revenge. Especially senior year, the big one."

"Yeah. I can't remember anything either. But maybe something did happen in your senior year. You know how sometimes things are vague or you're on the edges of it? Obviously, I was a freshman in college. All I remember from that year is missing you."

"I wrote you a letter a day. I can't believe I was that disciplined." She laughed.

"Maybe you loved me," he softly suggested.

"I did. Oh, Fair, those were wonderful and awful times. You feel everything for the first time. You have no perspective."

"You had some perspective by the time we married. I mean, you dated other men."

She patted his hand, removed hers, then noticed the animals, motionless, had been watching them. "Voyeurs."

"Interested parties." Murphy smiled.

"If this is going to get mushy I'm leaving," Pewter warned.

"Bull. You're as nosy as we are." Tucker giggled.

"I feel like we're the entertainment tonight." Fair spoke to the animals.

"You are," Pewter responded.

"They're my family," Harry said.

"So am I. Like it or not." Fair leaned forward in his chair.

"Can you remember how you felt back then? The wild rush of emotion? The sense of being your own person?"

"I remember. People grow in lots of different ways. Sometimes they stop. I think Charlie stopped. Never got beyond high school. Leo got beyond it but his defenses stayed the same: shoot from the hip. Susan has matured." He thought for a moment. "I think I have, too."

"Have I?"

"Yes, but you won't trust anyone again."

"I trust Mrs. H. I trust Susan."

"I should have said men. You won't trust men."

"I trust Market."

"Harry, you know what I mean. You won't trust men as romantic partners. You won't let a man into your life."

"I guess." Her voice sounded resigned.

"You know, I dropped by tonight to see how you were-check the horses, too. I don't know if it's your reunion or because I'm getting close to forty . . . the murders or that this late summer has been uncommonly beautiful, but whatever it is-I love you. I have always loved you, even when I was acting a fool. And I think you love me. Love me the old way. Down deep."

She stared into his clear light eyes. Memories. Their first kiss. Dancing on the football field to the car radio. Driving to colonial Williamsburg in Fair's old 1961 Chevy truck. Laughing. And finally, loving.

"Maybe I do."

"Equivocal?"

"I do."

He leaned across the table and kissed her.

"It would be more romantic if they'd wash one another's heads," Pewter advised.

"They're not cats," Mrs. Murphy said.

"Nobody's perfect." Tucker burst out laughing.

27

At seven in the morning a haze softened the outline of trees, buildings, bridges. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper, in separate vehicles, pulled into the paved driveway to the doctors' offices. Johnson McIntire, a brass plaque, was discreetly placed next to the dark blue door.

The white clapboard building looked like the house it once was. Back in the early fifties, Larry Johnson bought it and the house next door, where he continued to live.

Larry, slightly stooped now, his hair a rich silver, opened the door himself when the officers of the law knocked.

"Come in, come in." He smiled genially. "If you all are up as early as I am, it must be important. The murders, I suppose."

"Yes." Rick closed the door behind him as they followed Larry into his office covered with a lifetime of service awards and his medical diploma.

"Can I get you all some coffee?"

"No, no, thank you. We're already tanked." Deputy Cooper fished her notebook from her back pocket.

"Larry." Rick called the doctor by his first name as did most people. "You knew Charlie Ashcraft and Leo Burkey."

"I delivered them. In those days you did everything. G.P. meant just that."