Рита Браун - Pawing Through The Past

"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.